Understanding the pH of your soil is essential to good gardening. Although most people only know about pH in terms of the pH of water (for example, the sea), it’s important to note that soil also has pH, and it can make it more acid or alkaline, depending on the value.
To put it simply, if your soil has a pH level of above 7, then it’s considered to be alkaline. If the pH is below 7, however, then the soil is known to be acidic. However, while figuring out the value of your soil’s pH isn’t that hard, knowing which plants you can and can’t grow in a certain type of soil is a lot more challenging.
For starters, not all plants grow well in the same pH range. For example, even though a lot of common household plants and vegetables have adapted to a value that’s somewhere between alkaline and acidic, some have also adapted to the extremes. So you can find rare herbs that actually do well in a highly alkaline soil. For best results use an organic liquid fertilizer to enrich the soil.
What you have to remember is that whether the soil is acidic or alkaline, that’s what determines how fast your plants are able to absorb nutrients. While alkaline soil makes it harder to do so, acidic soil can actually make plants absorb nutrients a lot faster – sometimes even too fast. Based on this information and what you might read about the plant in question, you can determine quite easily what its ideal pH levels might be.