How to determine the acidity of the soil?

It is often necessary to know the acidity of the soil for planting certain flower or vegetable crops. It is the amount of lime in the ground and is also called the acid-base balance. It should be optimal for the plants to absorb all the nutrients well, and the harvest was qualitative and abundant. The gradation of acidity has five main types: from strongly acidic soils (3-4 pH) to strongly alkaline (8-9 pH). Neutral, in turn, is considered soil with acidity of 6-7 pH.

How to measure the acidity of the soil?

To determine what is the soil on your site, try one of the following ways:

• use of a special device for measuring the acidity of the soil - it is called an acid meter;
• if on the site in the last year did not grow anything, then pay attention to the plants that settled on this land. Slightly acidic or neutral soils often inhabit clover, nettle , bindweed, mother-and-stepmother. And on strongly acidic, in turn, pansies, horsetail, plantain, buttercup grow;
• It will help to determine the acidity of the soil, oddly enough, the usual vinegar. To do this, drip a few drops of this liquid on a handful of earth and see what happens. If there is a characteristic hiss with bubbles, as when quenching soda - this is a sign that the soil is neutral or closer to alkaline. If there are no such signs, then the acidity of the soil is high. To bring it back to normal, you will have to add limestone, chalk or dolomite flour to such a soil;
• experiment with black currant. Take a few leaves from the bush of this plant and fill with boiling water. When the water cools, mix the leaves with a spoon, and then gently dip a small amount of ground into the glass, the acidity of which you want to measure. The result should be judged by the color of the water: it will turn red (this means that the soil is strongly acidic), pink (medium-acid), green (neutral) or blue shade (alkaline).

Soil Moisture Meter

A simple device for determining the acidity of the soil can do it yourself. This is not even an instrument, but rather a folk method, which, nevertheless, does an excellent job with this task.

The essence of the method consists in preparing litmus bills. This is done so. Grind the head of red (violet) cabbage and prepare a decoction from it, in which it is necessary to soak the printer paper for a short while. After the strips have dried, you can begin to measure the pH of the soil. Simply moisten the soil sample and squeeze it in a fist together with a strip of indicator paper, so that it gets pretty wet. The color in which the paper is stained, and will tell you about the acidity of the soil. The red color of the paper determines the presence of acid, and green and blue - alkali.