“Dear Heart,” exclaimed Grandmother as she saw my offering of a Madonna lily bulb, “we can’t put a lily in this garden. It just wouldn’t be happy here.”
Grandmother knew that she couldn’t raise lilies, delphiniums, gardenias, and primroses in her garden, although she loved all of them. So it was useless to plant them.
After a fashion, she knew why. Every spring, she started into the garden, a glass of water in her hand, and I trailed along, as always, in her wake, also carrying a glass of water.
She was about to verify for perhaps the 15th time what she already knew, that her soil was bitter and would grow only the things that grow in bitter soil.
She put a little dirt on her tongue, cocked her head on one side while she considered it, spit vigorously, and rinsed her mouth.
I did the same because I aspired to be a good gardener too. Grandmother sighed and shook her head sadly. So did I, although the soil tasted just fine to me.
Fortunately, there were a few spots in the garden where leaves from the apple trees had fallen and stayed over winter, where the soil was a little more sour than bitter.
The place where Grandfather sawed up branches for the kitchen range, 5” or 6” inches deep in sawdust, had beautiful sour soil under it.
Grandmother dug there for soil for the window boxes and pots. Often she spread a layer of it on the strawberry bed before the new plants were set out. Always she gave the roses a mulch of this sawdust soil.
“It makes all the difference,” she would say solemnly, looking at her truly gorgeous cabbage roses and the climbing scarlet spreading over the roof of her gray cottage.
“Everything About pH”
Never in Grandmother’s life had she heard of pH. If she had, all the acid-loving flowers would have been blooming gaily, along with her sweet peas, acacias, heliotrope, calendulas, and forget-me-nots.
Nature doesn’t make things perfect for us. Now, take this matter of the soil. Sandy soils, low in clay or organic matter, have low reserves of acidity.
Clay soils have high reserves. Likewise, peat and muck soils have very high reserves.
Just what is this “pH?”
It is a way of measuring soil acidity and alkalinity just as a yardstick measures inches. The pH yardstick runs from 0 to 14. The 0 end of the measure is the acid end; the 14 is the alkaline.
Therefore halfway between, or 7, the acid and alkaline exactly balance, and the soil is neutral, neither the one nor the other. So if the soil tests less than 7, it is acid. If more than 7, it is alkaline.
Western Soil
Many Western soils are alkaline and mineral-rich but with the minerals locked up by the high alkalinity. That was Grandmother’s trouble and the despair of her gardening life. How easily it could have been corrected!
When I woke up to the true needs of my soil and added compost, peat, and leaf mold to it, I found that I had no trouble at all growing anything in it.
Eastern Soil
I have known Eastern gardeners to come to our country and spread a good amount of lime on their soil before planting in the spring, tints increasing its already too-high alkaline content.
Liming would be an excellent treatment for most Eastern soils where rainfall is heavy, and soil is often clay.
Calcium and magnesium are dissolved in rainwater and leached out of such soil. Lime replaces them, at the same time raising the pH.
If my Eastern neighbors had tested their soil first, they would have added sulfur, not like it, and immeasurably heightened their flowers’ chances for health and beauty.
Acidic To Neutral
Most flowers do well in soil that ranges from slightly acidic to neutral.
If you have to choose one pH for all your plants, the best would be 6.5 to 7. Here is a good reason; at this pH, all the minerals in the soil are available to plants.
If the soil is too acidic or too alkaline, certain necessary minerals are “locked up” in it but not to be had by plants hungering for them. Then you have the wretched situation of plants starving to death amid plenty.
The 6.5 to 7 pH provides the best environment for the tiny organisms that change the nitrogen in the air to food that plants can absorb. In addition, it is the best soil for the bacteria that decompose plant tissue to make hummus.
You will find an impressive number of flowers that prefer this pH for growth and flowering, such as:
- Roses
- African violets
- Bleeding hearts
- Fuchsias
- Geraniums
- Hyacinths
- Irises
- Lilacs
- Narcissus
- Pansies
- Snapdragons
- Tulips
These are some examples, to mention a few
Changing Soil PH
Here is another reason to change your pH if your soil is too acidic or alkaline. You will have much better tilth, a nice crumbly even texture when your pH is 6.5 or above and below 8. This is especially true if calcium is added to increase the pH.
From lumpy dirt, it becomes the soil you love to touch. It all goes back to those busy bacteria.
Give them soil where they can live and work efficiently, and they’ll work it over and over, producing a medium in which plants can put forth strong roots.
Decomposing remains of these roots continue to keep the soil structure in good condition.
Soil Testing
Testing for pH is almost as simple as measuring a yard with a ruler. All gardening shops sell testing devices.
The simplest is merely a strip of paper that one pushes down into the damp soil. If it doesn’t change color, the soil is 7, or neutral. If it turns pink, the soil is acidic; if it is blue, it is alkaline.
Testing Kits
The inexpensive testing kits are more accurate because they give the degree of acidity or alkalinity of the soil.
Dig up a soil specimen using a tool that has not come in contact with fertilizer or compost. I like a clean spoon.
Digging about 4” inches down and being careful not to touch the sample with your hands (they have an acid reaction, you know), put a tiny amount into a test tube, then an equal amount of solution. Cover the tube and shake vigorously.
Let the soil settle, then examine for the color of the liquid above it. You are given a color chart with which to compare it.
If it is hunter’s green, your soil is slightly alkaline; light green, about on the acidity scale, only a half degree less than neutral; daffodil-yellow, 6: pink, 5 pH; tomato red, 4 pH.
Of greatest value to any gardener is the chart with the kit, telling exactly what acidity each plant in the garden will do its best.
No guesswork here. You learn exactly what you have in pH and what you need to get the best results. As gardeners, we spend so much of our lives guessing and approximating; it’s a downright comfort to have something we can be sure of.
Now That You Know The Score, What To Do About It?
A too-acid soil will benefit from a dose of limestone. I like the dolomite best because it contains magnesium which is necessary for plants and often lacking. Or you may use wood ashes, crushed limestone, or ground oyster shells.
A little at a time here, please. Like salt in the soup, it’s easier to put it in than to get it out again if you’ve used too much.
Horticulturists advise one to go up or down one step at a time; if your soil is 4.5, raise it to 5.5 this year, then go after it again next.
If your soil is sandy, 30 pounds of lime per thousand square feet is enough; if it’s heavy clay, you can safely use 80 pounds per thousand.
Wait for a little after you apply it, then test again. It takes several months, sometimes a full year, for the whole effect of liming to become apparent.
What If Your Soil Tests Too High, And Is Alkaline?
Sulfur does an excellent job. Comparatively, little is necessary to lower the pH by one point; one tablespoonful for every five square feet will do it.
Instead of using sulfur, many gardeners prefer a mulch of peat, sawdust, pine needles, or compost made largely of leaves.
Suppose you are generally satisfied with the pH of your soil but would like to grow a few acid lovers like azaleas, rhododendrons, or gardenias. In that case, you can easily accommodate them with little islands of acidity by digging out part of the soil around them and replacing it with compost, peat, or leaf mold, or a mixture of them.
I have many of these little islands of special soil here and there in my garden. Test each separately whenever you feel dubious about it, and give it more peat or leaf mold as it shows a deficiency.
44659 by Dorothy Schroeder