Soil Acid Or Alkaline?

Posted by Ena Clewes
January 16th, 2008
Filed in Soil and Fertilizer
Tags: acid, acidity, alkaline, flowers, leaf mold, leaves, plants, shrubs., Soil and Fertilizer

I received a question the other day about soil being acid or alkaline, as it relates to flowers.

Cultivated flowers fall into two groups based upon soil preferance. One group will grow only in acid soil with a pH below 6.5, while the others prefer or will tolerate only alkaline soil, pH 6.5 or above.

Acid lovers are plants that thrive on raw humus, such as their ancestors found in the woods, where
leaves drop from the taller trees. Leaves, leafmold, peat moss, or other humus should be incorporated in soil where they are to be planted. Especially recommended are oak leaves, which produce
an acid humus.

The addition of bone meal supplies phosphorous; cottonseed or blood meal supplies nitrogen. Dry chicken manure, sheep manure, or compost can be added to leaf mulches as one fourth of the total.

Another question is, will flowering plants which prefer alkaline soil, grow in the same bed as those which grow only in acid soil?

There are acid-loving evergreens that need very little nitrogen, no rich compost, just leaf mulches and some bone meal. Likewise there are lilies that like humus and a deep mellow shaded soil; these two can grow together quite happily.

Many inexperienced gardeners think that they must prepare different subsoils , this only leads to a great deal of extra work. Practically, the matter is not serious at all. Many hundreds of thousands of gardens grow both
azaleas and columbines; campanulas, foxgloves, coreopsis, carnations and rhododendrons.

It seems, indeed, as if the question of aciditiy were over-emphasized. Organic matter in the ground will act as a buffer against extremes and enable the plants to seek with their roots what they need, lime as well as acid humus.

Since the acid-loving shrubby plants will usually be in the background, more leaves may be left there, while in the foreground, where carnations and tulips may be planted, a slight sprinkling of lime is made in the fall.