Found out my soil pH was way off after 3 years of struggling

I finally tested my backyard soil with one of those $15 kits from Lowe's and it came back at 8.2. Turns out all those hydrangeas I planted in Charlotte never stood a chance since they need around 5.5. Has anyone else dealt with crazy alkaline soil and fixed it without spending a fortune?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel1405d ago

Dude I feel your pain. My first year gardening I dumped a bunch of blueberry bushes into our clay soil without testing at all and got like three tiny bitter berries before they all died. Turns out my pH was like 7.8 so basically I was just planting them in dirt flavored with sadness. I ended up going the cheap route with just a ton of peat moss and some sulfur pellets mixed into the top foot of soil around my hydrangeas and it dropped a whole point in like three months. Still gotta baby them with some liquid sulfur every spring but beats spending $200 on fancy amendments.

victor_robinson5d ago

Peat moss is great but if you want a free shortcut, hit up a coffee shop for their used grounds they're practically giving away and they'll acidify the soil as they break down.