I'm a chemical engineer and chemist that grew up on a farm. I live in an area that has heavy clay topsoil with pH above 8. I've dealt with pH issues in my landscaping and garden and have researched the topic extensively. Everything related in this video is absolutely sound and accurate.
While the conclusion is sound. Some of the content is wrong. If you are a chemist, you should know sulfate ion is a very weak base instead of acid. Elemental sulfur actually convert into sulfuric acid by bacteria to lower the ph. Sulfates lower the ph because the cations are weak acid like aluminum ion, or a stronger acid like iron ion, through hydrolysis. Salts like sodium sulfate is almost neutral and will not change soil ph.
As a rhododendron collector and hybridizer I would kindly make the following correction on the effectiveness of Iron Sulfate vs. Sulfur Iron is absolutely crucial to the growth of Rhododendrons and therefore Iron Sulfate is the most efficient and best way to go for Rhododendron without any doubt. This of course unless your garden is already full of iron trace elements. Otherwise a great video.
Not sure anyone realizes how well you are breaking down and explaining biochemistry principles as it applies to soil and plants. Well done!! I really apreciate how you unlock the science behind gardening.
@@nancyfahey7518 not exactly sure why my complimenting and thanking the gentleman who made this very informative video is offensive to you. At the time I made the comment there were several comments either doubting or challenging the information. It’s been a couple of months since I made the comment, but I recall a specific comment criticizing the maker of the video for not showing images of his own garden and how that somehow invalidated what he was saying which in my opinion was just ridiculous and anti-science.So that was the context in which I made my comment. Now, you referred to me by my nickname. Do we know one another??
@@odimarbatista3976 it's not important and I just used the short version of your name so the other guy didn't think I was talking to him. Just maybe say "some people" instead of lumping it into "everyone or anyone".
My blueberries were sluggish for years, and just for kicks once, I sprinkled flowable sulfur around the plants, just to see what happens, and I knew the weeds would die. The bushes grew like crazy. Now I know exactly why. Thank you.
I grow commercial blueberries and I can attest to the fact that elemental sulfur is the way to go. Depending on the buffering capacity of the soil, an initial application of sulfuric acid can jump start things, but be very careful working with this acid since it causes severe skin burns, better to just rely on elemental sulfur. Powdered sulfur will work faster as mentioned here but still takes time. As a chemist I will say that even the microbial oxidation of elemental sulfur (S8) is in fact a chemical transformation 😉
@@kimberlynolz5725 very dilute solution, for sure, and outside root zone- I use H2SO4 {sulfuric acid} on my woodstove ashes to lower their high pH because they are a valuable mineral resource but definitely high pH, mostly from the potassium hydroxide present-
Excellent discussion! I am growing chestnut trees in a park that has a pH of 7.0_7.5, which is way too alkaline for chestnuts, who like a pH much lower and similar to what blueberry prefer. I researched the issue of how to drop the pH several years back when I saw my trees struggling an many seedlings just not making it. I found everything you talked about to be true, but in order to save some trees so that I would have a chance to then focus on a longer term solution, I found I needed to do something quickly to drop the pH. Even though it was not the best long term solution, I found that in order to drop the pH quickly my most effective, and inexpensive, short term solution was to mix white vinegar (acidic acid) into water which I could soak into the soil around the tree, usually with a little Epsom salts added. White vinegar is also very affordable, and can be picked up a most grocery stores in 4 or 5-qt jugs. I feel that using an organic acid like vinegar is also safer than some of the quicker options you also discussed that had the potential to deposit heavy metals into the soil if you use them very much. I actually rescued some trees this way and saw visual evidence of yellowed leaves greening up in under 2-wks. Recognizing that approach was only a short term fix, and potentially had some long term downsides, I transitioned to applying elemental sulfur after the soil temperatures got above 55-degrees, once the short term problem was handled. I now have much happier, healthy, chestnut trees in the park that are nice and green and are finally growing at the expected rates with burr/nut production after just a few years of growing. I've even experimented with several different organic acids (like citric and acetic) for quick acidification, and find for the most part it does not really matter, but acetic acid in the form of white vinegar is the most affordable and easiest to source. Just be a little careful not to apply it to green vegetative growth or it can burn leaves (that is why it's a major component of a common alternative DYI weed control spray some gardeners use with a salt and dish soap as a surfactant).
To help me get the pH down and maintain it fairly easily, I bury large pots in the ground and fill with soil and acidify that soil (for blueberries). I didn't want to be fighting the pH of the surrounding ground while trying to keep my blueberries happy all the time. I did drill extra holes in the bottoms and put some gravel underneath to help prevent drowning. So far it is easier to keep that isolated soil pH low vs open soil.
@@Jules-740 5 gallons are OK; but 10-15 gallons are best. Try to select wide and shallow pots, blueberries have shallow roots and spread laterally via suckers.
I make my homemade milk kefir. So I use the clear/yellowish whey part and dump it onto one big bed of soil when I have too much which is like everyday. After about a month the soil stays acidic year around. My hypothesis is that the acid producing bacteria subsist and produce just enough acid to not have to apply anything additional. I've tried this in several areas over the past decade.
It makes sense because strong kefir has a vinegar smell and acidic taste to it; I’ve been making kefir for years too, but doesn’t the whey in the kefir attract all kinds of insects ?
@@blessisrael6455 That's a really good question. It doesn't seem to attract any insects, one observation is it gets rid of ants, especially fire ants. There are a variety of earth worms in the soil, just a normal amount. My guess would be the kefir grains have broken everything down and there isn't really any spoilage to attract flies and whatnot. Also you can try and get a thin plastic tube, like the size of a pinky finger, shove it down to the bottom of the jar and suck on the end of the tube to create a siphon and drip the whey out into another jar that sits a little lower. Then refill your original jar that you siphoned from back up with milk. That is if you want to try a creamier version and want to skip straining for a day. When I over ferment all the heavy fatty stuff goes to the top and the whey is at the bottom and the occasional siphon is a bit easier at times.
@@stanlevox2291 When I can’t or don’t want to strain it when it’s curdled, I just pour in extra milk at room temp. and bam….. another extra day; it sounds a lot easier then siphoning it and it’s never hurt my grains; I always throw my whey out anyway, I’ll try it when I pot it; I don’t make a lot of dairy kefir, only intermittently to feed them lactose, I rely alot more on Oat and Coconut; I haven’t bought any soil yet because I thought that you just dig a hole and throw it in the ground… lol (it’s my first tree I’ve ever planted);
Robert, you are a wonderful and extremely knowledgeable gardener. Aluminum sulfate will lower soil pH as you say, however the acidifying property comes from the Al+++ cations; not the sulfate anion. Al+++ undergoes hydrolysis, i.e., it reacts with water, to form Al(OH)n, which dissociates to form hydrated Aluminum oxide and hydronium ions (hydrated protons). It is this dissociation reaction that lowers the pH. Sulfate anions are very weakly basic! (So weak that they are almost neutral). Another example: If Ferric chloride is dissolved in water the solution will be about as acidic as an equivalent concentration of acetic acid due to hydrolysis of Fe+++ cations, whereas Cl- anion is completely neutral in its reaction with water. Still another example: Ammonium sulfate is weakly acid due to the ammonium cation, and for that reason makes a good fertilizer for azaleas or blueberries. Thanks for many great gardening videos. I am a retired Chemistry Professor and lifelong gardener. I really appreciate your great videos.
WOW!! I might have to try this. I live in the mountains of NC. We have lots of wild bear (or bill) berries in our lower back yard & they grow great. So we were planning on moving our blue berry plants down there.
I found your videos at the right time, I'm a few weeks away from planting 8 blueberry bushes, 2 raspberries and 1 blackberry in 60'x4' berm I've created with fallen leaves over the last year, they're about 75% decomposed and I intend to add a few inches of compost on top of the whole area. My plan is to plant the berries about 5 feet apart and plant strawberries and herbs all over the base of the berries, a row of garlic in the rear, and sunflowers on either end. I've also foundation bricks on the front of the berm where I'll be planting an assortment of flowers. Thank you for your useful information, truly priceless advice.
I would love to see your berm. I am working on my blueberry, raspberry and blackberry section this year and plan to plant next year. Never thought of planting strawberries at the base. How did everything turn out, and what type of mulch did you use? Appreciate your response, if you get this.
For those on the east coast and the midwest, a good indicator of areas with acidic soil is juniper trees or what is often called red cedar. They will either only grow in acidic soil or make the soil acidic over time. Had a friend with horses and was struggling to grow grass in her pastures. The local ag agent tested the soil and recommended removing all the red cedars and turning in gypsum before planting warm season grasses for pasture. I have also noticed that in glade environments cedars grow well and have a ring of no grass all around them. Just too acidic for grasses to grow. Chipped red cedar for mulch will also suppress grasses and weeds better than pine mulch so might be a good choice for mulching these acidic soil loving plants rather than other options. This is not the same as western red cedar which is a true cedar tree. Eastern red cedar aka aromatic cedar aka juniper is very different.
As addressed in the video, conifers and trees in general do not acidify soil, they just thrive best in soils with a pH under 7, and so that's where they tend to outcompete other trees. The dry shade that conifers make is the reason grass won't grow, not the pH - many grass species (like fescue) prefer lower pH anyway.
For the past 20 years I have just been telling my acid loving plants to just live with my alkaline soil. Azaleas, rhododendrons, and blueberries. So far they have been doing fine. Can't spoil these plants. They have to learn to adapt.
The permaculturist Mark Sheppard, author of Restoration Agriculture, uses what he calls the STUN method. Sheer Total Utter Neglect. His fruit and nut trees and berry bushes need to survive on their own. He doesn't pamper any plant... or animal for that matter.
@ivanxyz1 you can put pelleted sulfur around your acid loving plants. Rake it in and be patient. You can also use aluminum sulfate BUT IT IS VERY CONCENTRATED BE VERY CAREFUL. APPLY ONLY VERY SMALL AMOUNTS AND WAIT FOR RESULTS. I can not express how careful you have to be enough. It will kill your plants if you use too much. Sulfur is much safer you could apply half of a cup around a tomato without damage if your soil is alkaline. Do not use on soil below 7.0 ever unless sulfur is a major component as you would around onions and minding pH above 5.9. Sulfur can be your friend.😊😊😊
I had a ph of 7.5, added sulfur to my Blueberry beds, out of 24 plants I ended up keeping 10, the rest died while waiting for the soil PH to drop, it took 2 years for the sulfur to actually work but when it did the blueberries really produced huge amounts, BUT it took 2 YEARS. The store told me it would take at least 1 year for it to actually work. I used pellets and crushed it, blended in rain water before applying, Victoria BC area Zone 9a or 9b. Thank you new subscriber and happy to be. Thank you. 50 year portrait photographer turned gardener
Add lots of pine bark, pine stick in the soil snd as a mulch. This way you got acidic soil and constantly releasing nutrients for the blueberries. If you want to give them a good treat and you got some cash to erase from your pocket, buy black coffee (not grinded) and add it to the soil. (Not used coffee grounds!)
I got some dormant blueberry bushes to plant the following spring. I knew they liked lower PH so I amended some soil with sulfur in a large trash can in the fall and left it in the greenhouse all winter. When spring got here the soil had a PH of 2.5. I just added a 1:1 ratio of native soil and the sulfur treated soil and put it in a 2 ft wide x 1 ft deep hole with my blueberry bushes and they did great this year. They final PH was around 4.8. If you use store bought soil, make sure to put a few scoops of native soil in with it this fall. Worked for me and should for you too!
One bit of advice is to have a soil test done by your local extension office and they will test for pH (among other things) and advise you on how much and what kind of amendments you need based on what crops you wish to grow.
This is the single best piece of advice on this video - hands down. TEST YOUR SOIL. Until you do that, you don't have a baseline to know what's needed. For pH, it's super easy to just mix ~1/4 garden soil to 3/4 distilled water in a mason jar, shake it up, rest it ten minutes, then use a pH test strip (either garden type or pool type) to dip in the water ~10 seconds -- look at the colors compared the the color chart on the container -- there's your soil pH. Cheap and easy. The better ag extension test tells you WAY more, though.
This is one of the best gardening videos I've seen on lowering soil pH. There is so much content out there these days with a lot of production value but this gets straight to the facts and dispels the myths
This was very valuable to me. I’m from far north Wisconsin, south shore of Lake Superior. Now I live in south Wisconsin. In the north, blueberries, cranberries, all sorts of berries thrive. In the south, they struggle. I’ve tried some of the soil conditioners you mention as rumored to help with no success. I assumed the difference in temperature and daylight were the culprit. This gives me a scientific platform to retry. Thank you!
You just explained my brain stumping problem I just discovered. Last year I decided it would awesome to get to have blueberries. Did a soil test, of course my soil is over 7. Do some research, they say sulfur in the fall. Found the pellets on Amazon, dug down six inches and dispersed it throughout, yay I should have acidic soil for my blueberries that I was planning on buying in a couple weeks. Pull off the mulch this spring.... pellets.... everywhere. I was flabbergasted. We had a really wet winter, how did they not break down AT ALL?!?! Now I know and I guess blueberries will just be next spring now or I might just scrap it all together since I'm solid clay 😞. Oh well, gardening is a journey, not a result.
Don’t give up! Go ahead and plant your blueberries and just keep working in the pure sulfur each year. I have clay soil I have amended with things such as wood mulch and pine needles and such. Your bushes may not grow as well in under these conditions but they will grow and they will produce….at least mine do.
FYI sulfur is not water soluble. So like the man said it has to be broken down by bacteria that's why the pelletized Not the best choice also gypsum is good for breaking down clay soil
@@scottprather5645 I just read a few articles about this. Do you think I could mix the gypsum in when I plant the blueberries or does it take time to break the clay down like sulfur takes time? This is my first journey with planting something that isn't really made for the pH of my soil.
I tried changing my soil in heavy clay with high ph like you, all my blueberry bushes died for the exception of the Reka cultivar which survived but hardly. what i did next is dug a trench the width and depth of the size of adult blueberry bush roots , lined it with geotextile and filled with a mix of peat moss, sand, compost, and other acidic bagged soil and topped with wood chips and even then Im probably going to have to add sulfur eventually as the organic matter decomposes. You can also just do it in individual pots and bury the pot so it benefits from the soil humidity and so you dont have to water as much. Either that or just grow honeyberry, you have to change your soil as much or at all...also water with rain water only
@@TibtheBear in all my years on this planet, I've never even heard of a honeyberry. What an interesting plant. I've never planted something that I've never ate before, but this might be the route I go since they do well in basically any soil/light/zone. I probably can't kill a plant that survives -40 degrees... probably 🤣
Thank you for all your efforts to make gardening a pleasure and better for me. I appreciate the time it takes to investigate and present practical solutions based on your experiments and detailed presentations that I have used these past years as I develop my backyard perennial garden.
@@ineshianewton7740 I 6hink he means use sulfur and let soil microbes do the acidifying over time as ammonium sulfate is a strong nitrogen fertilizer more than an acidifying agent-
I live in NE Nevada in alkaline desert. A ton of acidic ferrous sulfate and a few tons of sulfur, and vinegar {instant action} to help the conifers and I have a grove of 800 trees crowded happily, thriving.
Absolute the best concise explanation on UA-cam. Even in my southern native acidic soils it growing blueberries one has to monitor the ph especially if you are adding mulch as it breaks down it raises the pH by buffering. 5 + stars.
What people don't realize is that Human urine is a great fertilizer diluted. It also has: The American Association for Clinical Chemistry says the normal urine pH range bout 4.5 . I tested it with my PH meter and it indeed is 4.5 PH so guess what I'm going to be using. Also, I tested water with vinegar ultil I got to the level of acidity, approx 4oz Vinegar to 3 gal water and use weekly. I tested my blueberry soil and it is staying at the appropriate acidic level! My two cents worth.
Yes…where I live WILD raspberries…blackberries…blueberries… and Saskatoon berries (serviceberries) …partridgeberries .ALL GROW naturally in our wooded areas and undisturbed by man 🇨🇦
I totally agree that sulphur is best...I knew a nurseryman who sold chestnut trees...he recommended adding a cup of vinegar to 5 gals of irrigation water for the seedlings. I wonder how long this watering would stay at a lower ph. in the soil? Vinegar is usually not to expensive
i did that with the vinegar and then pH tested and it showed very little difference so i threw down an old nasty tasting unused coffee can on my two new plants half the can for each bush.the coffee grounds had not been brewed.the bbs LOVED it.i even cut off all the little new blooms to send the energy back to the roots as they are only a year old.they grew new blooms and are full of blueberries now.perfect leaves so far and so much growth.
Finding your channel absolutely saved a lot of frustration and money. It's ironic, Georgia is known for its blueberries but my clay-loam soil is neutral (or it's the pH strips). Our extensions charge $8/sample now, so that's not happening. I will transplant the three (different varieties) blueberry plants into large fabric bags and use low pH potting mix, pine fines, urine and sulfur powder. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and making it idiot proof 🤭.
For my Rhododendrons and Azaleas, I usually just chop up a few lemons and save some of my apple cores to spread them around the root area of the plants. Seems to work fine and hardly costs me anything. Ever since I started doing that, I've been having way healthier leaves and more flowers.
Great advice! Our town has a lot of pin oaks which love more acidic soil but we have a 7.5 pH. Most trees either die or have expensive treatments by a tree service. My husband uses a soil prob to make holes in the root zone of our tree and drops sulfur powder in them. He only treats it about every three years but we have the healthiest pin oak in town. (This unfortunate choice of trees was planted by former owners of our house.)
Very valuable information, Thabks so much for taking the trou le to make this video. I have been spending lots of money on that expensive brand. Will check my feed store. Thabks again for your valuable content. I watch every video.
It is a pleasure when you can listen to an expert on a subject that you are interested in. I am currently dealing with a southern Florida soil where I have a vegetable garden. I have been using the brand he mentioned that is 30% sulfur. I had my soil analyzed and it has a 7.7 pH. Using the 30% sulfur, the pH has moved somewhat lower to about 7.3. I didn't know it would take many months to wait for microbial action to work. I am middle of the growing season. I will get some powdered elemental sulfur and apply some to speed up the process. The vegetable plants seem to be growing too slowly at a 7.3 pH in about 2 months. If I can get the pH down to 6.8, I think I will see a difference. I understand that lowering pH is much more of a challenge than increasing pH with limestone. Lowering pH is temporary and requires frequent treatments.
Brilliant video, I can't speak in terms of changing your actual ground soil PH with compost, but one thing I will say is, in wild habitats where you find plants like Blueberries growing naturally, they obviously don't rely on Sulphur chips and what not, to make the acidic conditions that they flourish in. Which means that it could indeed be very possible to naturally grow Blueberries or acid loving plants simply by using organic matter (though no doubt it would take solid prep to do it, maybe even using liners to control drainage etc, especially on any scale), the key to the acidity would be to not use already well rotted compost, you would have to use a slow rotting mulchy loamy like compost and this would have to be used in a saturated environment that keeps the compost rotting slowly (just like with natural peaty bogs). The roots of the plant (in the case of Blueberries) can not be sitting in water, that's why their roots have evolved over time to be quite shallow, to avoid hitting the deeper parts in their natural saturated mediums, where the water would naturally well up. The water that the medium receives would also need to be rain water and it would need constant regular application (just like in their natural hilly habitat where the boggy ground is located), to keep the saturation and bacterial acidification going. Im guessing having a lined semi permeable raised bed could be the nearest you'd get to actually growing acid plants on an otherwise non acid plot, as it would help prevent higher PH ground level water from seeping up into the acid medium, either way, it would be an interesting challenge for sure.
The comments suggest a lot of people wanting to grow blueberries. Even though I have not tested the soil, I know it is likely 6.0 or above (have a Hydrangea). Only the fittest plants will survive this soil! But I wanted blueberries, so I bought very large grower pots (40cm, about 16") and bought bags of citrus/flowering potting soil. They are doing reasonably well. The other thing about blueberries, they seem to take about three years to really start producing. Yes, mine were looking like they struggled for the first few years, they seem to be slow starters. For strawberries I would recommend doing them in Kratky Hydroponics, super easy, and my water supply is "close enough". I live in a cool climate (some hard frosts, the very occasional snow) and do nothing to overwinter them, just chop off the dead growth at the start of spring, check the nutrients (usually discard the old nutrients into other potted plants, and start with a fresh batch), and just keep checking water levels during the growing season. I find the Kratky Method great for smaller (usually annual) green plants, with strawberries and chili peppers being the exception. A friend of mine has an introduction site to the Kratky Method. kratky.weebly.com/ The great take away from this video, that pH lowering requires a regular schedule. That I really must do, even for the potted blueberries, because I am sure even that potting mix will eventually raise in pH, even though a premium product.
Either you bought small, weak plants, or your conditions are not good for them. Every blueberry I ever grew in appropriate conditions took off like a rocket and was cropping nicely in year 2, often with a few fruits in year one depending on size of plant when I got it (I pull them off to encourage growth in year 1)
Awesome information! Looks like I will have a battle on my hands with my clay/loam if I want blueberries. This helped me understand why my previous efforts at blueberries have failed. I may just stick with honeyberries and saskatoons. I will probably start a small section just for experimenting and learning.
You really need to test your rain water and tap water every year so you know what it is doing to your plants. My well water is pH 7.2 and my rain water is 6.8. Thus, why I notice that rain water has been better for my plants. I now have rain barrels for watering. My plants do much better with it. I even use my rain water for starting seedlings indoors. I would have liked to see manures covered for pH purposes. My guess is that chicken manure would be best because sometimes lime is added to horse & cow manure. Furthermore, more and more horse & cow manures are being sold with herbicide residue in it. I use my own chicken manure for everything and I use my own urine as well. Yum! The plants love it!😊 Good video!
My well water is 9.4! I have to use RO or rainwater for my garden and houseplants. I notice that my garden doesn't seem to mind the high pH so much, but my houseplants suffer.
Great great video - lots of good info - I have been growing blue berries for some years and I always plant new plants with three things in the soil. My natural soil, peat moss and Miracle Grow vegetable plant soil in equal amounts. At the beginning of every season, I scratch a mixture of Miracle Grow vegetable soil and peat moss into about the top one/two inches of soil around the plants about maybe 12-15 inches in diameter around each plant as I'm weeding etc... this works well for me. Then during the season I make a peat moss slurry in 5 gal buckets and water the plants with this slurry a couple times a season and scratch the peat moss into the soil. I also use Epsom salts dissolved in water and Miracle Grow regular plant food dissolved in water a couple times per season and always get very good blue berries. - just got to keep the birds and animals away from the blue berries. My original soil condition is very much clay! Your videos are very good and informative - thx for them
Great information! Presented perfectly! I have neutral soil conditions and by growing in ground pine bark AND using Sulphur am able to grow blueberries reliably. If I were to do it all again I would some isolate (containerize) my blueberry soil from the native soil and my life would have so much easier. I tried ALL the methods. Sulphur works the rest do not outside of a very temporarily.
makes a lot of sense, as wild blueberries we find in forest are often growing in the wetter forests where its just sand and a top layer of decomposing wood duff, and probably watered by a lot of mineral water coming down the rock faces, where there are at times either iron or sulphur. as western mountains are common to have fault lines and springs.
I water my plants with an 86 oz almond milk jug, and my tap water PH is 6.55. I added 1 teaspoon of lemon juice (from the grocery store) and the PH dropped to 5.55. That seems like an easy adjustment to do before I add any nutrients. Is there any downside to using lemon juice? Nice video, thank you sir!
Very very interesting information, thank you so much. I literally bought a bag of sulfur from my local nursery yesterday as one of my camelias has been looking a bit sad since it went into the ground a while back, and I've been monitoring whether it's been getting too much water or whether it simply needs more acidity. Wish I'd watched this video a few days back!
You stated that peat moss does not appreciable lower PH, without specifying which type of peat moss was used in the experiment. For non-sphagnum peat moss this is likely true, however I use Canadian sphagnum peat moss, which has a pH range of 3.0 to 4.5 and will very much reduce soil pH.
Had an infestation of Pine Beetle years ago and decided to find my own method to keep them alive, used Sulfur dusting around the trees several times a year for a couple years. The Sulhur was effective killing the fungi the Beetle carried and the trees recovered, Pine Beetle/fungi was a Ministry of Defense weapon from the cold war and was released to blame people for overpopulation.
For potted plants like sundews I just add a teaspoon of vinegar per liter of water once a month. Maybe in the long run like over years it might cause some issues.
I have rich black soil from an area that was once wetlands. About a foot and a half down is a layer of clay. I want a few blueberry bushes in pots that will come in during our very cold zone 5B winter along with my few citrus trees. I have used a mix of my native soil and peat moss in equalish amounts along with a bit of perlite and vermiculite. Then I put the sulphur pellets at the surface in a circle around the base of the bushes. My understanding is that would keep the soil from getting too compacted and allow for me to be able to keep the pH lower. Also, I make yogurt every week or two and am planning to water the bushes with the pint or quart of whey I strain out. It has a pH of around 4.5. This in addition to applying the sulphur biannually. So far the bushes I bought bare root late winter/early spring are looking really healthy and even put out a few blooms. What do ya think?
Really helpful video, thank you. I was debating with myself whether it was worthwhile creating an acidified bed for blueberries, or to invest in large pots and ericaceous compost for them… just purely on a cost plus time basis, growing in large pots seem to be a no-brainer and the hassle free option. I will stick to growing things in my soil that want to grow there 😂 and not fight nature
I have my blueberries in containers. The containers were filled with 1 part peat moss, 1 part black kow compost, and 1 part perlite with a nice amount of 555 Burpee all purpose fertilizer. A month after planting I wanted to check the Ph with my reader because the leaves were not very green and leaning towards some redness. 1 container was at 5 and the other was at 5.5. After having a day or two of warm weather they bounced back and got really green.
Very useful video. It certainly pays to shop around, prices vary massively. I've just ordered at 5kg for £30 delivered, cheapest I could find. Surprised you didn't tackle diluting it in water to get it in?
I have alkaline soil. But I love blueberries! I am going to start turning 1 of my (3' x 6') 6 raised beds into more acidic soil to grow a couple/few blueberry bushes. Zone 5. I tried the huge pots with a lot of peat moss and that was a complete failure. I definitely think I will have a better chance in ground (rather, in raised bed) with your sulfer suggestions. Even my extension office is rooting against me, but they did suggest some specific cultivars online, so I am going to try again. We get the chill hours they need, it has to b possible, right? ;)
Blueberries do fine in big enough pots as long as they receive consistent water through the growing season. No reason they won't do well in beds with the right soil prep, feeding, and watering - don't let them dry out when they are making fruit!
Thank you, very much. Your explanation is fantastic. I already bought sulfur powder, and in next months, I will prepare bed, for my blueerry plants in little london UK, garden. Very educative video with best explanation I ever seen.
Well I have been tossing our coffee grounds around our acid-loving plants thinking I was making headway. I don't think it hurts a thing and will continue doing it but now I will heed your advice and get a bag of powdered sulfur and mix it in also. Fortunately all my plants were planted in the best soil for their liking and I don't have to do much but tweak the acidity a slight bit. I completely enjoyed your reasoned explanations and have just bought your book which looks like just what I need.
Fantastic information. You make great videos. I just found it funny that you call aluminum a heavy metal when it is nearly the lightest metal, far lighter than iron. Still don't need it in my garden soil, though.
The term 'heavy metal" is used to describe the toxicity of the metal on an atomic level, indicating a metal that we need to be careful of getting exposed to too much. Granted it does not weigh a lot.
The publisher at a newspaper where I worked had us save all the coffee grounds each day. When accumulated, he took them home to put around his blueberry bushes.
Nicely explained, thank you! I already gave up on my blueberries, which were planted under pine trees and faithfully given coffee grounds. Here in central Florida it's literally sand. I may see whether they, and my blackberries, are even alive and then try this.
@charlotteking8123 You can turn Florida sand into soil with mulch. I go to the county and get the free mulch from all tree trimmers and yard waste. It’s not as pretty but free.
I add 1 Tbsp of store-bought lemon juice to 1 gal of water. It basically works, except for my gardenia, which still has some chlorosis (yellow leaves with green veins). I will add soil acidifier when I replant it.
So glad i found your video. I am in southern Indiana and in really sandy soil and wanted to try blueberries and looks to be possible after seeing your video. Thanks much
Try using a deep woodchip mulch as well, blueberries love it. My hunch is that it isn't the pH, but the readily available nutrients. Anyway, I have seen blueberries thrive in deep woodchip mulch over soil was neutral.
What are the organic sources of macro and micro nutrients that can be used directly into the soil, one example is sulpher you explained. Is it worthwhile to use rock phosphate and similarly other nutrients and what aretheir sources. Thanks
Microorganisms are responsible for changing the pH of the soil. This is why in nature the blueberries thrive in a damp partially sheltered environment, where the mulch from the environment feeds a particular type of soil microorganism for blueberries. So if you make a brew of microbes in a bucket just check the pH of the finished fermented product. I use potatoes and native soil, about 6.4 ph and seems to work for most things
I'm a chemical engineer and chemist that grew up on a farm. I live in an area that has heavy clay topsoil with pH above 8. I've dealt with pH issues in my landscaping and garden and have researched the topic extensively. Everything related in this video is absolutely sound and accurate.
While the conclusion is sound. Some of the content is wrong. If you are a chemist, you should know sulfate ion is a very weak base instead of acid. Elemental sulfur actually convert into sulfuric acid by bacteria to lower the ph. Sulfates lower the ph because the cations are weak acid like aluminum ion, or a stronger acid like iron ion, through hydrolysis. Salts like sodium sulfate is almost neutral and will not change soil ph.
Please how about cow or chicken manure??
Thank you Steve. Its funny that probably every Steve or Steven I know have a very good mind for thinking and for knowledge 👍
As a rhododendron collector and hybridizer I would kindly make the following correction on the effectiveness of Iron Sulfate vs. Sulfur
Iron is absolutely crucial to the growth of Rhododendrons and therefore Iron Sulfate is the most efficient and best way to go for Rhododendron without any doubt. This of course unless your garden is already full of iron trace elements.
Otherwise a great video.
Not sure anyone realizes how well you are breaking down and explaining biochemistry principles as it applies to soil and plants. Well done!! I really apreciate how you unlock the science behind gardening.
That's what we're here for odi. I'm offended by your comment.
@@nancyfahey7518 not exactly sure why my complimenting and thanking the gentleman who made this very informative video is offensive to you. At the time I made the comment there were several comments either doubting or challenging the information. It’s been a couple of months since I made the comment, but I recall a specific comment criticizing the maker of the video for not showing images of his own garden and how that somehow invalidated what he was saying which in my opinion was just ridiculous and anti-science.So that was the context in which I made my comment. Now, you referred to me by my nickname. Do we know one another??
@@odimarbatista3976 it's not important and I just used the short version of your name so the other guy didn't think I was talking to him.
Just maybe say "some people" instead of lumping it into "everyone or anyone".
We realise 😉
I use 2 tablespoons white vinegar in a gallon of water every 2-3 months on my Blueberries and they produce pounds here in L.A. Cheers!
How many blueberry bushes do you put the solution on?
@@robincoxson7831 5
Vinegar 5 or 10%?
Nice. Can you answer the other questions please. I too have those questions. Thank you 🎉
@@Lizi46 5%
This guy has a PHD in common sense ! Great video ! Explains very important principles for dummies like me. Well done.
"PHD in common sense"
Love it! 😂 This will be my new favorite saying! 🤣🤣🤣
Actually he has a PH-D. 😊
This is a true expert, I treasure his knowledge, what a legacy sir!!
So do I. May God bless this man.
@@traceykays433 May God bless you too in Jesus mighty name!
My blueberries were sluggish for years, and just for kicks once, I sprinkled flowable sulfur around the plants, just to see what happens, and I knew the weeds would die.
The bushes grew like crazy. Now I know exactly why.
Thank you.
What is flowable sulfur did you mean flowers of sulfur?
@@anderander5662 flowable sulfur, it's a common agricultural fungicide.
@@markhavel2922 thanks
I grow commercial blueberries and I can attest to the fact that elemental sulfur is the way to go. Depending on the buffering capacity of the soil, an initial application of sulfuric acid can jump start things, but be very careful working with this acid since it causes severe skin burns, better to just rely on elemental sulfur. Powdered sulfur will work faster as mentioned here but still takes time. As a chemist I will say that even the microbial oxidation of elemental sulfur (S8) is in fact a chemical transformation 😉
Exactly so, and there is some SO2 formation in wet soil even w/o microbes-
@@jackprier7727 correct, put elemental sulfur in a glass of water and monitor the pH over time. It decreases.
Where do you buy it?
How would u use sulfuric acid to acidify ur soil?
@@kimberlynolz5725 very dilute solution, for sure, and outside root zone- I use H2SO4 {sulfuric acid} on my woodstove ashes to lower their high pH because they are a valuable mineral resource but definitely high pH, mostly from the potassium hydroxide present-
Excellent discussion! I am growing chestnut trees in a park that has a pH of 7.0_7.5, which is way too alkaline for chestnuts, who like a pH much lower and similar to what blueberry prefer. I researched the issue of how to drop the pH several years back when I saw my trees struggling an many seedlings just not making it. I found everything you talked about to be true, but in order to save some trees so that I would have a chance to then focus on a longer term solution, I found I needed to do something quickly to drop the pH. Even though it was not the best long term solution, I found that in order to drop the pH quickly my most effective, and inexpensive, short term solution was to mix white vinegar (acidic acid) into water which I could soak into the soil around the tree, usually with a little Epsom salts added. White vinegar is also very affordable, and can be picked up a most grocery stores in 4 or 5-qt jugs. I feel that using an organic acid like vinegar is also safer than some of the quicker options you also discussed that had the potential to deposit heavy metals into the soil if you use them very much. I actually rescued some trees this way and saw visual evidence of yellowed leaves greening up in under 2-wks. Recognizing that approach was only a short term fix, and potentially had some long term downsides, I transitioned to applying elemental sulfur after the soil temperatures got above 55-degrees, once the short term problem was handled. I now have much happier, healthy, chestnut trees in the park that are nice and green and are finally growing at the expected rates with burr/nut production after just a few years of growing. I've even experimented with several different organic acids (like citric and acetic) for quick acidification, and find for the most part it does not really matter, but acetic acid in the form of white vinegar is the most affordable and easiest to source. Just be a little careful not to apply it to green vegetative growth or it can burn leaves (that is why it's a major component of a common alternative DYI weed control spray some gardeners use with a salt and dish soap as a surfactant).
Don't do it
After going through all this myself year after year, I finally made peace with buying my blueberries at the market. 😅
To help me get the pH down and maintain it fairly easily, I bury large pots in the ground and fill with soil and acidify that soil (for blueberries). I didn't want to be fighting the pH of the surrounding ground while trying to keep my blueberries happy all the time. I did drill extra holes in the bottoms and put some gravel underneath to help prevent drowning. So far it is easier to keep that isolated soil pH low vs open soil.
I was thinking of doing that myself!
That's exactly what I was thinking of doing with a clay pot or burlap sack!
How large are the pots? 20 gallon?
@@Jules-740 5 gallon. As I understand it, blueberries have fairly shallow roots.
@@Jules-740
5 gallons are OK; but 10-15 gallons are best. Try to select wide and shallow pots, blueberries have shallow roots and spread laterally via suckers.
I make my homemade milk kefir. So I use the clear/yellowish whey part and dump it onto one big bed of soil when I have too much which is like everyday. After about a month the soil stays acidic year around. My hypothesis is that the acid producing bacteria subsist and produce just enough acid to not have to apply anything additional. I've tried this in several areas over the past decade.
Wow I make that myself but didn't know ur knowledge. God bless u.
Yes see the microbes in the soil regulate pH
It makes sense because strong kefir has a vinegar smell and acidic taste to it; I’ve been making kefir for years too, but doesn’t the whey in the kefir attract all kinds of insects ?
@@blessisrael6455 That's a really good question. It doesn't seem to attract any insects, one observation is it gets rid of ants, especially fire ants. There are a variety of earth worms in the soil, just a normal amount. My guess would be the kefir grains have broken everything down and there isn't really any spoilage to attract flies and whatnot. Also you can try and get a thin plastic tube, like the size of a pinky finger, shove it down to the bottom of the jar and suck on the end of the tube to create a siphon and drip the whey out into another jar that sits a little lower. Then refill your original jar that you siphoned from back up with milk. That is if you want to try a creamier version and want to skip straining for a day. When I over ferment all the heavy fatty stuff goes to the top and the whey is at the bottom and the occasional siphon is a bit easier at times.
@@stanlevox2291 When I can’t or don’t want to strain it when it’s curdled, I just pour in extra milk at room temp. and bam….. another extra day; it sounds a lot easier then siphoning it and it’s never hurt my grains; I always throw my whey out anyway, I’ll try it when I pot it; I don’t make a lot of dairy kefir, only intermittently to feed them lactose, I rely alot more on Oat and Coconut;
I haven’t bought any soil yet because I thought that you just dig a hole and throw it in the ground… lol (it’s my first tree I’ve ever planted);
I hesitated because 20 minutes. But its jam packed of great easily understandable information! 👍👍👍👍👍
Yup, thst is worth a sub! Great content! 🍀🙏🇺🇸
I wish I knew that sulfer-ph CHART was at the 20 minute mark! 😂
Robert, you are a wonderful and extremely knowledgeable gardener. Aluminum sulfate will lower soil pH as you say, however the acidifying property comes from the Al+++ cations; not the sulfate anion. Al+++ undergoes hydrolysis, i.e., it reacts with water, to form Al(OH)n, which dissociates to form hydrated Aluminum oxide and hydronium ions (hydrated protons). It is this dissociation reaction that lowers the pH. Sulfate anions are very weakly basic! (So weak that they are almost neutral). Another example: If Ferric chloride is dissolved in water the solution will be about as acidic as an equivalent concentration of acetic acid due to hydrolysis of Fe+++ cations, whereas Cl- anion is completely neutral in its reaction with water. Still another example: Ammonium sulfate is weakly acid due to the ammonium cation, and for that reason makes a good fertilizer for azaleas or blueberries. Thanks for many great gardening videos. I am a retired Chemistry Professor and lifelong gardener. I really appreciate your great videos.
Clear, concise and no hype.
I thoroughly enjoyed this! It added to my knowledge and I appreciate the effort to put it together.
1 cup of vinegar
and 2 gallons of water per plant. N.C.. 20:35 zone 7. I add it around mid February . My plants are over 9ft. Tall and 12yrs. Old.
So do you mix 1/2 cup pergallon?
WOW!! I might have to try this. I live in the mountains of NC. We have lots of wild bear (or bill) berries in our lower back yard & they grow great. So we were planning on moving our blue berry plants down there.
Thanks. Im going to try this
Hello how often did you reapply?
@@ineshianewton7740 important question. I'd like to know this too.
What an excellent explanation of the biochemistry involved in soil science! Thank you for this!
This video is the best explanation I have seen so far.
I found your videos at the right time, I'm a few weeks away from planting 8 blueberry bushes, 2 raspberries and 1 blackberry in 60'x4' berm I've created with fallen leaves over the last year, they're about 75% decomposed and I intend to add a few inches of compost on top of the whole area. My plan is to plant the berries about 5 feet apart and plant strawberries and herbs all over the base of the berries, a row of garlic in the rear, and sunflowers on either end. I've also foundation bricks on the front of the berm where I'll be planting an assortment of flowers. Thank you for your useful information, truly priceless advice.
I would love to see your berm. I am working on my blueberry, raspberry and blackberry section this year and plan to plant next year. Never thought of planting strawberries at the base. How did everything turn out, and what type of mulch did you use? Appreciate your response, if you get this.
Your description sounds beautiful!
For those on the east coast and the midwest, a good indicator of areas with acidic soil is juniper trees or what is often called red cedar. They will either only grow in acidic soil or make the soil acidic over time. Had a friend with horses and was struggling to grow grass in her pastures. The local ag agent tested the soil and recommended removing all the red cedars and turning in gypsum before planting warm season grasses for pasture. I have also noticed that in glade environments cedars grow well and have a ring of no grass all around them. Just too acidic for grasses to grow. Chipped red cedar for mulch will also suppress grasses and weeds better than pine mulch so might be a good choice for mulching these acidic soil loving plants rather than other options. This is not the same as western red cedar which is a true cedar tree. Eastern red cedar aka aromatic cedar aka juniper is very different.
As addressed in the video, conifers and trees in general do not acidify soil, they just thrive best in soils with a pH under 7, and so that's where they tend to outcompete other trees.
The dry shade that conifers make is the reason grass won't grow, not the pH - many grass species (like fescue) prefer lower pH anyway.
For the past 20 years I have just been telling my acid loving plants to just live with my alkaline soil. Azaleas, rhododendrons, and blueberries. So far they have been doing fine. Can't spoil these plants. They have to learn to adapt.
You have pine trees nearby, I suspect.
The permaculturist Mark Sheppard, author of Restoration Agriculture, uses what he calls the STUN method. Sheer Total Utter Neglect. His fruit and nut trees and berry bushes need to survive on their own. He doesn't pamper any plant... or animal for that matter.
You are duplicating the woods environment when you acidise. Makes you subject to fungus when lower ph. Stuff grows better.
@ivanxyz1 you can put pelleted sulfur around your acid loving plants. Rake it in and be patient.
You can also use aluminum sulfate BUT IT IS VERY CONCENTRATED BE VERY CAREFUL. APPLY ONLY VERY SMALL AMOUNTS AND WAIT FOR RESULTS. I can not express how careful you have to be enough. It will kill your plants if you use too much. Sulfur is much safer you could apply half of a cup around a tomato without damage if your soil is alkaline. Do not use on soil below 7.0 ever unless sulfur is a major component as you would around onions and minding pH above 5.9.
Sulfur can be your friend.😊😊😊
Once established a lot of plants locally affect soil PH around the root zone.
A good presentation! No disturbing music or flickering pictures, but solid straight info! Thank you.
I had a ph of 7.5, added sulfur to my Blueberry beds, out of 24 plants I ended up keeping 10, the rest died while waiting for the soil PH to drop, it took 2 years for the sulfur to actually work but when it did the blueberries really produced huge amounts, BUT it took 2 YEARS. The store told me it would take at least 1 year for it to actually work. I used pellets and crushed it, blended in rain water before applying, Victoria BC area Zone 9a or 9b. Thank you new subscriber and happy to be. Thank you. 50 year portrait photographer turned gardener
Add lots of pine bark, pine stick in the soil snd as a mulch. This way you got acidic soil and constantly releasing nutrients for the blueberries. If you want to give them a good treat and you got some cash to erase from your pocket, buy black coffee (not grinded) and add it to the soil. (Not used coffee grounds!)
I got some dormant blueberry bushes to plant the following spring. I knew they liked lower PH so I amended some soil with sulfur in a large trash can in the fall and left it in the greenhouse all winter. When spring got here the soil had a PH of 2.5. I just added a 1:1 ratio of native soil and the sulfur treated soil and put it in a 2 ft wide x 1 ft deep hole with my blueberry bushes and they did great this year. They final PH was around 4.8. If you use store bought soil, make sure to put a few scoops of native soil in with it this fall. Worked for me and should for you too!
Thank you. Literally one of the best gardening videos I have seen. Very technical, very instructive.
One bit of advice is to have a soil test done by your local extension office and they will test for pH (among other things) and advise you on how much and what kind of amendments you need based on what crops you wish to grow.
This is the single best piece of advice on this video - hands down. TEST YOUR SOIL. Until you do that, you don't have a baseline to know what's needed. For pH, it's super easy to just mix ~1/4 garden soil to 3/4 distilled water in a mason jar, shake it up, rest it ten minutes, then use a pH test strip (either garden type or pool type) to dip in the water ~10 seconds -- look at the colors compared the the color chart on the container -- there's your soil pH. Cheap and easy. The better ag extension test tells you WAY more, though.
Now a days, I wouldn’t advertise what you have growing on your land to anyone. I know the local extension offices keep long records.
@@Miss1776-ic5ic ? Do not understand. I work at an Extension office and I don’t know of this problem. (I guess unless its something illegal lol)
This is one of the best gardening videos I've seen on lowering soil pH. There is so much content out there these days with a lot of production value but this gets straight to the facts and dispels the myths
This was very valuable to me. I’m from far north Wisconsin, south shore of Lake Superior. Now I live in south Wisconsin. In the north, blueberries, cranberries, all sorts of berries thrive. In the south, they struggle. I’ve tried some of the soil conditioners you mention as rumored to help with no success. I assumed the difference in temperature and daylight were the culprit. This gives me a scientific platform to retry. Thank you!
Man this channel really teaches the FUNDEMENTALS!! Which I dont think many ppl who are on here sharing info might even know..
You just explained my brain stumping problem I just discovered. Last year I decided it would awesome to get to have blueberries. Did a soil test, of course my soil is over 7. Do some research, they say sulfur in the fall. Found the pellets on Amazon, dug down six inches and dispersed it throughout, yay I should have acidic soil for my blueberries that I was planning on buying in a couple weeks. Pull off the mulch this spring.... pellets.... everywhere. I was flabbergasted. We had a really wet winter, how did they not break down AT ALL?!?!
Now I know and I guess blueberries will just be next spring now or I might just scrap it all together since I'm solid clay 😞.
Oh well, gardening is a journey, not a result.
Don’t give up! Go ahead and plant your blueberries and just keep working in the pure sulfur each year. I have clay soil I have amended with things such as wood mulch and pine needles and such. Your bushes may not grow as well in under these conditions but they will grow and they will produce….at least mine do.
FYI sulfur is not water soluble.
So like the man said it has to be broken down by bacteria that's why the pelletized Not the best choice also gypsum is good for breaking down clay soil
@@scottprather5645 I just read a few articles about this. Do you think I could mix the gypsum in when I plant the blueberries or does it take time to break the clay down like sulfur takes time? This is my first journey with planting something that isn't really made for the pH of my soil.
I tried changing my soil in heavy clay with high ph like you, all my blueberry bushes died for the exception of the Reka cultivar which survived but hardly. what i did next is dug a trench the width and depth of the size of adult blueberry bush roots , lined it with geotextile and filled with a mix of peat moss, sand, compost, and other acidic bagged soil and topped with wood chips and even then Im probably going to have to add sulfur eventually as the organic matter decomposes. You can also just do it in individual pots and bury the pot so it benefits from the soil humidity and so you dont have to water as much. Either that or just grow honeyberry, you have to change your soil as much or at all...also water with rain water only
@@TibtheBear in all my years on this planet, I've never even heard of a honeyberry. What an interesting plant. I've never planted something that I've never ate before, but this might be the route I go since they do well in basically any soil/light/zone. I probably can't kill a plant that survives -40 degrees... probably 🤣
Thank you for all your efforts to make gardening a pleasure and better for me. I appreciate the time it takes to investigate and present practical solutions based on your experiments and detailed presentations that I have used these past years as I develop my backyard perennial garden.
Kefir, yoghurt and effective microorganisms mixed in with soil does also very good.
What about kombucha?
I use ammonium sulfate three times per year and it keeps ph down and plant thriving. Works great.
Cheap, too-
But yo7 have to keep doing it, you want the soil to do for you, use the microbes
@warrenrose9448 hello what microbes to use?
@@ineshianewton7740 I 6hink he means use sulfur and let soil microbes do the acidifying over time as ammonium sulfate is a strong nitrogen fertilizer more than an acidifying agent-
@@warrenrose9448 you always have to keep lowering it because of the well water I use has a ph of 7.
I live in NE Nevada in alkaline desert. A ton of acidic ferrous sulfate and a few tons of sulfur, and vinegar {instant action} to help the conifers and I have a grove of 800 trees crowded happily, thriving.
Thank you so much. I am getting ready to transplant all my blueberries and this was really helpful and kept me from making a mistake.
This is gold Jerry! Gold!
Absolute the best concise explanation on UA-cam. Even in my southern native acidic soils it growing blueberries one has to monitor the ph especially if you are adding mulch as it breaks down it raises the pH by buffering.
5 + stars.
What people don't realize is that Human urine is a great fertilizer diluted. It also has: The American Association for Clinical Chemistry says the normal urine pH range bout 4.5 . I tested it with my PH meter and it indeed is 4.5 PH so guess what I'm going to be using. Also, I tested water with vinegar ultil I got to the level of acidity, approx 4oz Vinegar to 3 gal water and use weekly. I tested my blueberry soil and it is staying at the appropriate acidic level! My two cents worth.
The Soil Science book is excellent. Highly recommend
I live in a mining town. Our whole city has acidic soil
Wild blueberries are abundant in our are.
Yes…where I live WILD raspberries…blackberries…blueberries… and Saskatoon berries (serviceberries) …partridgeberries .ALL GROW naturally in our wooded areas and undisturbed by man 🇨🇦
I live on a limestone ridge. My soil is very alkaline.
@@bobbipearcey2059you are blessed with a great environment.
@@Cookies-i2f Set up a raised bed for the blueberries if you can :)
I totally agree that sulphur is best...I knew a nurseryman who sold chestnut trees...he recommended adding a cup of vinegar to 5 gals of irrigation water for the seedlings. I wonder how long this watering would stay at a lower ph. in the soil? Vinegar is usually not to expensive
i did that with the vinegar and then pH tested and it showed very little difference so i threw down an old nasty tasting unused coffee can on my two new plants half the can for each bush.the coffee grounds had not been brewed.the bbs LOVED it.i even cut off all the little new blooms to send the energy back to the roots as they are only a year old.they grew new blooms and are full of blueberries now.perfect leaves so far and so much growth.
Here in the PNW the blueberry growers use doug fir sawdust. The local sawmills are happy to part with it.
Finding your channel absolutely saved a lot of frustration and money. It's ironic, Georgia is known for its blueberries but my clay-loam soil is neutral (or it's the pH strips). Our extensions charge $8/sample now, so that's not happening. I will transplant the three (different varieties) blueberry plants into large fabric bags and use low pH potting mix, pine fines, urine and sulfur powder. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and making it idiot proof 🤭.
For my Rhododendrons and Azaleas, I usually just chop up a few lemons and save some of my apple cores to spread them around the root area of the plants. Seems to work fine and hardly costs me anything. Ever since I started doing that, I've been having way healthier leaves and more flowers.
Great advice! Our town has a lot of pin oaks which love more acidic soil but we have a 7.5 pH. Most trees either die or have expensive treatments by a tree service. My husband uses a soil prob to make holes in the root zone of our tree and drops sulfur powder in them. He only treats it about every three years but we have the healthiest pin oak in town. (This unfortunate choice of trees was planted by former owners of our house.)
Very valuable information, Thabks so much for taking the trou le to make this video. I have been spending lots of money on that expensive brand. Will check my feed store. Thabks again for your valuable content. I watch every video.
I was already using sulphur but in an ad-hoc way. Thanks for making the fundamentals and application clear.
It is a pleasure when you can listen to an expert on a subject that you are interested in.
I am currently dealing with a southern Florida soil where I have a vegetable garden. I have been using the brand he mentioned that is 30% sulfur. I had my soil analyzed and it has a 7.7 pH. Using the 30% sulfur, the pH has moved somewhat lower to about 7.3. I didn't know it would take many months to wait for microbial action to work. I am middle of the growing season. I will get some powdered elemental sulfur and apply some to speed up the process. The vegetable plants seem to be growing too slowly at a 7.3 pH in about 2 months. If I can get the pH down to 6.8, I think I will see a difference. I understand that lowering pH is much more of a challenge than increasing pH with limestone. Lowering pH is temporary and requires frequent treatments.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🏆You and your channel are absolutely STELLAR! Thank you so much for your research based content.
Brilliant video, I can't speak in terms of changing your actual ground soil PH with compost, but one thing I will say is, in wild habitats where you find plants like Blueberries growing naturally, they obviously don't rely on Sulphur chips and what not, to make the acidic conditions that they flourish in.
Which means that it could indeed be very possible to naturally grow Blueberries or acid loving plants simply by using organic matter (though no doubt it would take solid prep to do it, maybe even using liners to control drainage etc, especially on any scale), the key to the acidity would be to not use already well rotted compost, you would have to use a slow rotting mulchy loamy like compost and this would have to be used in a saturated environment that keeps the compost rotting slowly (just like with natural peaty bogs).
The roots of the plant (in the case of Blueberries) can not be sitting in water, that's why their roots have evolved over time to be quite shallow, to avoid hitting the deeper parts in their natural saturated mediums, where the water would naturally well up.
The water that the medium receives would also need to be rain water and it would need constant regular application (just like in their natural hilly habitat where the boggy ground is located), to keep the saturation and bacterial acidification going.
Im guessing having a lined semi permeable raised bed could be the nearest you'd get to actually growing acid plants on an otherwise non acid plot, as it would help prevent higher PH ground level water from seeping up into the acid medium, either way, it would be an interesting challenge for sure.
I have alkaline soil. In the spring i give everything a shot of Miracle grow in the watering can. I see a difference in the plants in a few hours.
The comments suggest a lot of people wanting to grow blueberries. Even though I have not tested the soil, I know it is likely 6.0 or above (have a Hydrangea). Only the fittest plants will survive this soil! But I wanted blueberries, so I bought very large grower pots (40cm, about 16") and bought bags of citrus/flowering potting soil. They are doing reasonably well. The other thing about blueberries, they seem to take about three years to really start producing. Yes, mine were looking like they struggled for the first few years, they seem to be slow starters.
For strawberries I would recommend doing them in Kratky Hydroponics, super easy, and my water supply is "close enough". I live in a cool climate (some hard frosts, the very occasional snow) and do nothing to overwinter them, just chop off the dead growth at the start of spring, check the nutrients (usually discard the old nutrients into other potted plants, and start with a fresh batch), and just keep checking water levels during the growing season. I find the Kratky Method great for smaller (usually annual) green plants, with strawberries and chili peppers being the exception. A friend of mine has an introduction site to the Kratky Method. kratky.weebly.com/
The great take away from this video, that pH lowering requires a regular schedule. That I really must do, even for the potted blueberries, because I am sure even that potting mix will eventually raise in pH, even though a premium product.
Either you bought small, weak plants, or your conditions are not good for them. Every blueberry I ever grew in appropriate conditions took off like a rocket and was cropping nicely in year 2, often with a few fruits in year one depending on size of plant when I got it (I pull them off to encourage growth in year 1)
@@EdB-j3s I re-potted in citrus potting mix. That helped a lot.
Awesome information! Looks like I will have a battle on my hands with my clay/loam if I want blueberries. This helped me understand why my previous efforts at blueberries have failed. I may just stick with honeyberries and saskatoons. I will probably start a small section just for experimenting and learning.
You really need to test your rain water and tap water every year so you know what it is doing to your plants. My well water is pH 7.2 and my rain water is 6.8. Thus, why I notice that rain water has been better for my plants. I now have rain barrels for watering. My plants do much better with it. I even use my rain water for starting seedlings indoors.
I would have liked to see manures covered for pH purposes. My guess is that chicken manure would be best because sometimes lime is added to horse & cow manure. Furthermore, more and more horse & cow manures are being sold with herbicide residue in it.
I use my own chicken manure for everything and I use my own urine as well. Yum! The plants love it!😊
Good video!
My well water is 9.4! I have to use RO or rainwater for my garden and houseplants. I notice that my garden doesn't seem to mind the high pH so much, but my houseplants suffer.
This is an outstanding presentation on this subject. Admirably concise and substantive. Thank you.
Great great video - lots of good info - I have been growing blue berries for some years and I always plant new plants with three things in the soil. My natural soil, peat moss and Miracle Grow vegetable plant soil in equal amounts. At the beginning of every season, I scratch a mixture of Miracle Grow vegetable soil and peat moss into about the top one/two inches of soil around the plants about maybe 12-15 inches in diameter around each plant as I'm weeding etc... this works well for me. Then during the season I make a peat moss slurry in 5 gal buckets and water the plants with this slurry a couple times a season and scratch the peat moss into the soil. I also use Epsom salts dissolved in water and Miracle Grow regular plant food dissolved in water a couple times per season and always get very good blue berries. - just got to keep the birds and animals away from the blue berries. My original soil condition is very much clay! Your videos are very good and informative - thx for them
This is, by far, the most relevant and comprehensive explanation regarding the soil PH subject, I encountered online.
Thank you sir! 👍
I love this info~. Thank you so much Mr. Garden Man~
so encouraging , to all agriculture industry to find out more😊
Great information! Presented perfectly!
I have neutral soil conditions and by growing in ground pine bark AND using Sulphur am able to grow blueberries reliably. If I were to do it all again I would some isolate (containerize) my blueberry soil from the native soil and my life would have so much easier. I tried ALL the methods. Sulphur works the rest do not outside of a very temporarily.
makes a lot of sense, as wild blueberries we find in forest are often growing in the wetter forests where its just sand and a top layer of decomposing wood duff, and probably watered by a lot of mineral water coming down the rock faces, where there are at times either iron or sulphur. as western mountains are common to have fault lines and springs.
thank you for your time and effort to make this video. you skipped citric acid/vinegar. do they decrease ph? do you have experience with them?
I water my plants with an 86 oz almond milk jug, and my tap water PH is 6.55. I added 1 teaspoon of lemon juice (from the grocery store) and the PH dropped to 5.55. That seems like an easy adjustment to do before I add any nutrients. Is there any downside to using lemon juice? Nice video, thank you sir!
Microbes will eat the citric acid and the pH will go up again. It's not a change in pH that will last.
Fantastic information, and very well delivered. Thank you
very good explanation i growed blueberries this important video is for for me ❤❤❤
I use starch rich water, rice-wash mostly, to water my plants. The yeasts in the soil ferment it.
Very interesting, thank you so much for the explanation
Very very interesting information, thank you so much. I literally bought a bag of sulfur from my local nursery yesterday as one of my camelias has been looking a bit sad since it went into the ground a while back, and I've been monitoring whether it's been getting too much water or whether it simply needs more acidity. Wish I'd watched this video a few days back!
The best video about acidifying soil! Many thanks!!!
I thoroughly enjoy listening to your wisdom. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us in a clear fashion that is easily understood.
You stated that peat moss does not appreciable lower PH, without specifying which type of peat moss was used in the experiment. For non-sphagnum peat moss this is likely true, however I use Canadian sphagnum peat moss, which has a pH range of 3.0 to 4.5 and will very much reduce soil pH.
Had an infestation of Pine Beetle years ago and decided to find my own method to keep them alive, used Sulfur dusting around the trees several times a year for a couple years.
The Sulhur was effective killing the fungi the Beetle carried and the trees recovered, Pine Beetle/fungi was a Ministry of Defense weapon from the cold war and was released to blame people for overpopulation.
For potted plants like sundews I just add a teaspoon of vinegar per liter of water once a month. Maybe in the long run like over years it might cause some issues.
This is the best video I have watched on the subject.
Thank you! I always enjoy and get a lot out of your videos.
Great video. Thank you very much. Hope for the Future!
I have rich black soil from an area that was once wetlands. About a foot and a half down is a layer of clay. I want a few blueberry bushes in pots that will come in during our very cold zone 5B winter along with my few citrus trees. I have used a mix of my native soil and peat moss in equalish amounts along with a bit of perlite and vermiculite. Then I put the sulphur pellets at the surface in a circle around the base of the bushes. My understanding is that would keep the soil from getting too compacted and allow for me to be able to keep the pH lower.
Also, I make yogurt every week or two and am planning to water the bushes with the pint or quart of whey I strain out. It has a pH of around 4.5. This in addition to applying the sulphur biannually. So far the bushes I bought bare root late winter/early spring are looking really healthy and even put out a few blooms. What do ya think?
Really helpful video, thank you.
I was debating with myself whether it was worthwhile creating an acidified bed for blueberries, or to invest in large pots and ericaceous compost for them… just purely on a cost plus time basis, growing in large pots seem to be a no-brainer and the hassle free option. I will stick to growing things in my soil that want to grow there 😂 and not fight nature
I have my blueberries in containers. The containers were filled with 1 part peat moss, 1 part black kow compost, and 1 part perlite with a nice amount of 555 Burpee all purpose fertilizer. A month after planting I wanted to check the Ph with my reader because the leaves were not very green and leaning towards some redness. 1 container was at 5 and the other was at 5.5. After having a day or two of warm weather they bounced back and got really green.
Very useful video. It certainly pays to shop around, prices vary massively. I've just ordered at 5kg for £30 delivered, cheapest I could find. Surprised you didn't tackle diluting it in water to get it in?
Pine bark with peat moss in a container is the easiest way to grow blueberries. Use acid fertilizer in spring and when flowering.
I have alkaline soil. But I love blueberries! I am going to start turning 1 of my (3' x 6') 6 raised beds into more acidic soil to grow a couple/few blueberry bushes. Zone 5. I tried the huge pots with a lot of peat moss and that was a complete failure. I definitely think I will have a better chance in ground (rather, in raised bed) with your sulfer suggestions. Even my extension office is rooting against me, but they did suggest some specific cultivars online, so I am going to try again. We get the chill hours they need, it has to b possible, right? ;)
Blueberries do fine in big enough pots as long as they receive consistent water through the growing season. No reason they won't do well in beds with the right soil prep, feeding, and watering - don't let them dry out when they are making fruit!
Thank you for the best class on soil! You are a gardening genius must friend! Best videos on you tube!
Thanks for so clearly presenting all that information, valuable information.
Thank you, very much. Your explanation is fantastic. I already bought sulfur powder, and in next months, I will prepare bed, for my blueerry plants in little london UK, garden. Very educative video with best explanation I ever seen.
Well I have been tossing our coffee grounds around our acid-loving plants thinking I was making headway. I don't think it hurts a thing and will continue doing it but now I will heed your advice and get a bag of powdered sulfur and mix it in also. Fortunately all my plants were planted in the best soil for their liking and I don't have to do much but tweak the acidity a slight bit. I completely enjoyed your reasoned explanations and have just bought your book which looks like just what I need.
Best video on the lowering of pH EVER! I'm so glad I found this channel.
got the right knowledge on this subject. don't think he blinked one time
It helps to grow these acid loving plants in raised beds or berms to minimize the amount of soil needing fixing!!
Fantastic information. You make great videos. I just found it funny that you call aluminum a heavy metal when it is nearly the lightest metal, far lighter than iron. Still don't need it in my garden soil, though.
The term 'heavy metal" is used to describe the toxicity of the metal on an atomic level, indicating a metal that we need to be careful of getting exposed to too much. Granted it does not weigh a lot.
The publisher at a newspaper where I worked had us save all the coffee grounds each day. When accumulated, he took them home to put around his blueberry bushes.
Nicely explained, thank you! I already gave up on my blueberries, which were planted under pine trees and faithfully given coffee grounds. Here in central Florida it's literally sand. I may see whether they, and my blackberries, are even alive and then try this.
@charlotteking8123 You can turn Florida sand into soil with mulch. I go to the county and get the free mulch from all tree trimmers and yard waste. It’s not as pretty but free.
Good video
Good wisdom
Thank you.
I add 1 Tbsp of store-bought lemon juice to 1 gal of water. It basically works, except for my gardenia, which still has some chlorosis (yellow leaves with green veins). I will add soil acidifier when I replant it.
Flower need iron sulphate. Not only acidic soil.
Yellow leaves with green veins is a lack of iron chelate.
So glad i found your video. I am in southern Indiana and in really sandy soil and wanted to try blueberries and looks to be possible after seeing your video. Thanks much
Try using a deep woodchip mulch as well, blueberries love it. My hunch is that it isn't the pH, but the readily available nutrients. Anyway, I have seen blueberries thrive in deep woodchip mulch over soil was neutral.
Appreciate it. I may try that since i have strawberries,raspberries,blackberries and really wanted blueberries for the farmers market. Thanks again
Valuable comprehensive information
Thank you ! 🙏
What are the organic sources of macro and micro nutrients that can be used directly into the soil, one example is sulpher you explained. Is it worthwhile to use rock phosphate and similarly other nutrients and what aretheir sources. Thanks
Thank you Mr. P. Great information! 🌺💚🙃
Thank you for this master class to acidify your soil
Microorganisms are responsible for changing the pH of the soil. This is why in nature the blueberries thrive in a damp partially sheltered environment, where the mulch from the environment feeds a particular type of soil microorganism for blueberries. So if you make a brew of microbes in a bucket just check the pH of the finished fermented product. I use potatoes and native soil, about 6.4 ph and seems to work for most things
Excellent info. What about adding carbon?