Garden Soil

My garden soil is being quite uncooperative. Several years ago when I had it tested, the pH was about 7.7. It needs to be about 6.5. I had been adding acidifier, pouring whey around plants, adding organic matter. 

My okra is struggling –  everything else is doing ok but remember last year’s garden was a flop. A few weeks ago, I got my little pH meter out and checked the soil and it was right at 8. Not good. I sent off a soil sample to A&M and got back the results Monday. The pH is 8.1. How, after all the work I’ve done to bring it down, as it gone up? Where’s acid rain when I need it?

The problem is that our soil has lots of lime – there’s limestone everywhere. Our water, though it tastes fine, has a very high pH and with all the watering I do out there, the high pH of the water seems to be winning over everything I’m doing to bring down the pH.

After getting the soil results, I went down to the ag store, showed the very helpful guy there my results and I came home with liquid iron for spraying the foliage, sulfur, slow release fertilizer and . . dog food! 

I guess unless I can get that pH down substantially, I can forget ever having much of a blueberry crop, of much of any crop for that matter if it stays around 8. Frustrating!

Other places I’ve lived, the pH was too low and we had to add lime or something similar to raise the pH. That seemed a whole lot easier than trying to bring it down, especially when the water is working against us, but that’s what happens when you live where there’s so much limestone.

The guy at the garden center recommended using peat moss. I had never heard that. He said get as much as I can afford, spread it out as thick as possible and till it in several week before planting in the spring. I’m more comfortable doing that than I am using iron and sulfur but for now, I’m using iron and sulfur. Next spring, we’ll add peat moss and hope for a lower pH.

We have a couple of fruit trees that are suffering and I added sulfur to them yesterday and had to put up a barricade to hopefully keep the chickens from eating all the pelletized sulfur. Since I can only spray the iron foliage spray in the evening, I’ve done most of the garden, and about 1/3 of the fruit trees. Even the lemon trees in pots that were planted in well balanced potting soil have a high pH because of the water.

Some days it seems that between the hail, too much water, too much dry, grasshoppers and pH, I’m better off sitting inside knitting instead of trying to grow anything around here. I don’t ever want to be without a garden but having one here sure isn’t easy but I guess having a garden anywhere isn’t easy!