welcome to the rest of garden today I
want to show you how to use pH test
strips to test the pH of your garden
soil this book was only three bucks and
actually had it shipped over from
England there are 80 test strips here
and you can see it provides you a scale
the orange to red end is acidic the
purple to green end is alkaline and all
you do is you use these test strips in
in a in your soil and I'll show you how
to do that process and you'll get a
pretty good idea of what the pH level is
excuse me I have set up here just plain
white vinegar baking soda baking soda is
alkaline vinegar is acidic and I also
have my peat moss that I've been doing a
meter testing with and a pH for peat
moss is about 4.5 to 5.5 so to set up
the test I'm using pure peat moss but
this would be the same thing you would
do with your garden soil is you want to
put in one to two tablespoons of the
soil or in this case peat moss into a
bowl and add enough water so that it has
the consistency of a milkshake and then
when you prepare this you want to let it
sit for an hour and just let any kind of
chemical reaction or change meting new
water take place and this way you'll get
a nice ph test measure on it you don't
want to use tap water this is actually
rain water I have a five-gallon
container that I put outside I collect
rain water and tap water could influence
the the testing of your pH so to test it
you put in again one to two tablespoons
of the soil enough rain water or
distilled water to make the test sample
look like a milkshake and you put in the
test strip for about 20 or 30 seconds
why that sits I just want to show you
what happens with vinegar and baking
soda this is another test strip this is
vinegar and you don't even need to of
course leave it in here long but you can
see right away it turns the dark orange
color because it's extremely acidic and
on the other side over here
is baking soda and when I put that in
you're going to see that quickly turns
to the green blue purple color and again
that's just to remember the baking soda
the alkaline and the acidic side is
going to look like this so the alkaline
sides are going to be more green purpley
and the vinegar sides are going to be
more red yellow orange so after about
twenty or thirty seconds reach into your
sample take it out rinse it in the
distilled water or rainwater and then
you compare it to where it is and it
falls somewhere right about there which
is pretty close to the range so these
test strips I think are pretty accurate
and you're inexpensive but for about
three dollars you can get pH test strips
to test your garden soil and you can get
a pretty good reading to let you know
what you might have to do with your soil
come the next growing season hope you
enjoyed the video please check out my
blog at www.micaelaferrero.com