hi I'm Stephen of Alberta urban garden
CA the pH of your garden soil is an
important factor that can often be
overlooked the pH in your garden soil
can impact the availability of nutrients
within that soil and your plants ability
to take them up if you're growing in a
soil that's not optimal for the plant
often you can sacrifice all of your
harvests or if your plant does produce
it's going to look very stressed and
produce significantly less on today's
joint episode between the testing garden
assumption series and the urban
gardening series I'm going to take a
look at the impact the pH can have on
your garden how you can easily measure
it yourself and how you can amend it
over time if need be pH is measured on a
fourteen point scale with zero being the
most acidic seven neutral and fourteen
the most basic most common garden plants
prefer a slightly acidic or neutral soil
there is a link in the description to
the University of Vermont's reference
page outlining the optimal pH for a
number of common crops there are two
common ways that you can measure the pH
of your garden soil most accurate way to
learn the pH of your soil is to run a
sample through a lab like Maxim
Analytics or a university extensions
office you can measure the pH of your
garden soil yourself however this method
is far less accurate but it should give
you a good indication if you're roughly
in the right range or not in order to
measure the pH of your garden soil at
home you'll need two things the first is
a pH meter I got this one for under $20
and it should be accurate enough for my
purposes the second is deionized or
distilled water you can pick this up in
most drug stores and it has a neutral pH
whereas your rainwater may be a little
acidic and your tap water is a little
basic which can throw off your results
the pH of your garden soil will shift
throughout the year and from spot to
spot this meter is not nearly as
accurate as the ones that they have in
the lab however if you increase the
number of sampling points you take you
should increase the reliability of the
results you get for this roughly 1 meter
by 1 meter better or 3 by 3 foot I've
selected four spots that are
representative of the bed the more
sampling locations you may
more accurate your numbers will be pull
back the mulch and the top two to three
centimeters or one inch of the soil most
roots are below this initial area and
the mulch that I use to cover it over
the course of this season can
temporarily impact the soils pH makes
the soil in the hole down to six inches
or 15 centimeters making sure that it's
as close as possible to a consistent
mixture or homogeneous flood the area
with your deionized water this will help
the meter get a proper reading of the
soils pH turn on the meter and make sure
that the probes are clean insert it and
wait for one minute until you take your
reading record the reading and repeat at
your other sampling locations once you
have finished up average the readings
that is the most representative pH of
your soil if your pH reading is within
the range for that particular crop you
can rest assure that the pH won't cause
any issues for your crop and is unlikely
to change significantly over time one of
the most common mistakes that new
gardeners make is to apply a
store-bought fertilizer to try to fix a
nutrient deficiency without knowing if
that's actually the issue as I mentioned
earlier the pH can affect the
availability of the nutrients within the
soil and the ability of the plant to
take it up this may be when you need to
take a look at the pH of your soil and
if you need to amend it over time if the
pH of your soil is very low and you need
to raise it gypsum or lime can be added
to bring that pH back up if the pH of
your soil is too high and you need to
lower it you can add elemental sulfur or
flowers of sulfur or simply mix in peat
into your garden soil compost that is
made with a higher carbon content such
as leaf mold does have a lower pH
however it is not as effective as peat
or elemental sulfur for lowering the pH
of your soil but it does make up a good
base that maintains an initially lower
pH there are quite a few myths related
to lowering the pH of your soil
amendments such as cold coffee and pine
needles themselves are acidic however
too weak or neutralized before they can
transfer any acidity to your soil if you
do need to amend the pH of your garden
soil in order to bring it into the
correct range you'll likely need to
continue to do this over time as the
soil will return to its original pee
if left alone this is through what's
called the buffering capacity of soil
essentially chemical reactions in the
soil will eventually return it to that
original ph if left alone quick pH
changes of over one point can have a
devastating effect on the plants that
you're growing quick shifts in pH can
destroy the microorganisms that run the
nutrient cycle in your garden if you do
shock the organisms in the soil that run
the nutrient cycle your plants may
struggle to take up any nutrients
especially if that quick shift in pH has
burned the plant's roots if you are
going to amend the pH of your soil make
sure to take it slow I usually recommend
doing one treatment a month during the
growing season and measuring the pH
before and after each treatment starting
with the garden soil that has a pH
that's already within the optimal range
for the plants that I'm going to grow is
one of the main reasons why I chose to
grow in raised beds
it helps me control the pH from day one
and this allows me to avoid the cost of
testing and amending the soils pH over
time I started most of my garden beds
with a soil that contained a high
component of compost and where I knew
that I would have acid loving crops like
my lingonberries and blueberries I add
mix peat into it to keep the initial pH
much lower peat is a non-renewable
resource and I like many of you like to
avoid using store-bought products within
my garden however I did need a soil that
had a lower pH for a number of my crops
so I weighed my options I could either
use peat which is a waste product here
in Alberta or I could use elemental
sulfur which is also non renewable but
shipped here from other places and
continue to use it for the life of those
plants I do however recommend if you are
going to make these decisions you do
your research and you make your own
decision don't take my word on it please
if you'd like to learn how to grow more
food at home or learn about other garden
myths check out the links on screen now
and make sure to subscribe to get all
the future episodes in these two series