Your Garden’s Soil pH Matters

Acidic? Alkaline? Get savvy about soil pH! By infusing your gardening with a bit of chemistry, you’ll fine-tune your soil to produce the healthiest crops and the highest yields.

By Barbara Pleasant
Published on October 7, 2020
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by AdobeStock/iMarzi

Get savvy about soil pH! Learn how to raise pH in soil and how to decrease soil pH to produce the healthiest crops and the highest yields.

To ensure your garden crops make the most of the rich, organic soil you create, you need to understand your soil’s pH. The pH describes the relative acidity or alkalinity of your soil’s makeup, and it has important implications for plant health and growth. Soil pH impacts beneficial fungi and bacteria in the soil and influences whether essential minerals are available for uptake by plant roots.

What Is Soil pH?

A solution’s pH is a numerical rating of its acidity or alkalinity. All pH is measured on a logarithmic scale from zero (most acidic) to 14 (most alkaline, or basic); 7.0 is neutral. The pH scale is used by chemists to measure the concentration of reactive hydrogen ions (H+) in a solution.

Most food crops prefer a pH of 6.0 to 6.5, but you can have a productive food garden as long as your pH is about 5.5 to 7.5 . A difference of just 0.5 may not seem like much, but the pH scale is logarithmic, which means, for example, a pH of 7.0 is actually 10 times less acidic than a pH of 6.0. Potatoes and most berries, which grow best in more acidic soil, are the main exceptions to the average preferred pH range.

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