[NAFEX] Mark's soil
Jim Fruth
jimfruth at charter.net
Mon Jul 20 08:40:44 EDT 2009
Mark,
Most soil contains buffers and you may have to add more acid to achieve
the desired pH. That is why I advise people to wait a year before planting
an acid-loving crop. Get the soil to the proper acidity, then plant.
Before I planted my blueberries, I visited the University of Minnesota
Blueberry Test Plot. There I learned that plants in too high a soil pH
didn't exhibit choruses, rather they took on a purple color. I didn't think
to ask how it affected yield.
Our soil is 7.0 pH based on two different soil tests (A&L Labs). Last fall
I decided I wanted to plant blueberries. I rented a skid loader and dug out
room for two blueberry beds. After removing a significant amount of topsoil
and piling it up. I put a generous amount of leaf litter down. Then added
some sulfur on the leaf litter. Then added the topsoil back to make a
couple of terraces for the blueberry plants. Then added more sulfur and a
little urea. In the spring I planted the blueberries. So far they show no
signs of iron chlorosis. The funny thing is though, I checked the pH of the
soil at the blueberry root zone (about 4 inches down) about a month ago. It
measured still measured 7.0. It appears to take awhile for the bacteria to
lower the pH and for the sulfur to leach down.
Mark wrote: "Our soil is 7.0 pH based on two different soil tests (A&L
Labs). Last fall I decided I wanted to plant blueberries. I rented a skid
loader and dug out room for two blueberry beds. After removing a
significant amount of topsoil and piling it up. I put a generous amount of
leaf litter down. Then added some sulfur on the leaf litter. Then added
the topsoil back to make a couple of terraces for the blueberry plants.
Then added more sulfur and a little urea. In the spring I planted the
blueberries. So far they show no signs of iron chlorosis. The funny thing
is though, I checked the pH of the soil at the blueberry root zone (about 4
inches down) about a month ago. It measured still measured 7.0. It appears
to take awhile for the bacteria to lower the pH and for the sulfur to leach
down."
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