Soil Gardening Tips: Acidity or Alkalinity
Garden Soil Notes for Gardener Wannabes
The greatest frustration of would-be gardeners is having nothing to show for all their efforts. Flowering shrubs may never bloom or just grow a flower or two and then nothing. You may be one of these frustrated gardeners wondering what went wrong or what was wrong with the plants. Read these soil gardening tips to help you learn what went wrong and how to correct it properly.
Soil Gardening Tips: Acidity or Alkalinity
Plants need a good soil to grow. If your plants do not thrive or grow robust and bear a bunch of blooms, there must be something wrong with the soil. The soil might be too acidic or lack acidity.
- To fix the problem, look up the type of soil for the flowering shrubs you want to grow.
To grow roses successfully, you need a soil mixture of 50% organic material consisting of compost or rotted manure or humus and 50% sand, silt and clay. These should be blended in proper proportions.
- To check if you are doing right, the soil should be loamy – it should not be too muddy when wet or to hard when dry. This type of soil, assures good drainage which is important to grow healthy fat roses.
If you are growing a variety of plant, use a soil testing kit to check your soil.
To make is easier for newbies, soil that is very acidic has an extremely low pH and is said to be sour. On the other hand, soil that has high pH is said to be sweet. There should be no problem if you have acidic or alkaline soil because this can be remedied.
If your soil has a high level of alkaline, plant poppies, chamomile, rosemary, lavender, and fennel – and watch them grow healthily.
There is no end to what you can plant on both types of soils.
- It is a good thing that you can have both types of soil in a garden or have your potted plants filled with soil that would benefit your selected plants.
Garden Soil Remedies
If you go out and buy a new home soil test kit it can easily determine soil pH. If the soil pH is lower than neutral pH 7, your soil is acidic. A Compost Tumbler will produce soil that has a very low pH level balance and then produce soil that’s a very low pH level.
To decrease the acidity of your gardens soil, sprinkle dolomitic limestone; that would be about 3 to 10 lbs for every 10 sq. ft. of garden soil but more is needed for clay-like soil.
- Gather the ash from your fireplace and spread the same amount over the area to decrease soil acidity.
For too much alkaline in the soil, that is soil with higher pH beyond the 7 pH neutral, increase the pH by adding peat moss, aluminum sulfate and sulfur to the soil. A correct ratio would be 1.5 lbs for sulfur, 10 lbs for aluminum sulfate, and 5 lbs for peat moss for very 10 sq. ft. of soil.
- Wood ash, hydrated lime, coffee grounds, and gypsum are also great for treating alkaline soil. The stuff is available at garden supplies shops in the locality.
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