How To Determine The Acidity Of The Soil In The Garden

How To Determine The Acidity Of The Soil In The Garden
How To Determine The Acidity Of The Soil In The Garden

Video: How To Determine The Acidity Of The Soil In The Garden

Video: How To Determine The Acidity Of The Soil In The Garden
Video: How to determine is your soil alkaline or acidic? 2024, March
Anonim

For proper development, plants need soil that is neutral in acid-base balance. This indicator is determined depending on the content of lime, or CaCO3. With a small amount of it, the earth becomes acidic. In these cases, it is necessary to make up for the lime deficit.

How to determine the acidity of the soil in the garden
How to determine the acidity of the soil in the garden

On acidic soils, plants are not able to fully assimilate nutrients, nitrogen and potassium fertilizers are ineffective. All this leads to a decrease in the yield.

With an excess of CaCO3, the soil is considered alkaline. In terms of acidity, soils can be strongly alkaline, alkaline, neutral, slightly acidic, acidic and strongly acidic. The following methods can be used to determine the acidity of the earth:

  • Consider vegetation. On strongly acidic soils, buttercups, plantains, horse sorrel, pansies, horsetails love to grow. On slightly acidic and neutral ones, nettle, clover, coltsfoot, field bindweed grow. But this method, of course, does not give one hundred percent certainty.
  • Try vinegar. Use a spatula to dig in a little earth and put a few drops of vinegar on it. When bubbles appear, it can be concluded that the acidity of the sample is moderate. If there is no reaction, the soil is acidic - the addition of chalk or limestone is necessary.
  • You can do a little experiment. Take a few leaves of black currant, brew with a glass of boiling water, cool. Stir the leaves and dip a lump of earth from the plot into this water. The water may turn red - this means that the soil is highly acidic, or turn pink - moderately acidic. If the water turns green, the soil is neutral. Blue means alkaline soil.
  • There are instruments - "acid meters", with which you can try to find out the acidity.

But all of these methods refer to the so-called "home" and do not give one hundred percent accuracy. It is best to take a soil sample to a chemical laboratory for analysis.

If the soil is acidic in the country, lime must be added to it. Dolomite, limestone, crushed chalk, fluff lime are used for this purpose (it should not be added together with manure).

Liming of the earth must be carried out before planting plants. The additive is distributed over the soil surface and mixed properly. The procedure can be performed once every several years. The amount of dressing varies depending on the composition of the soil and the initial acidity.

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