Gardening in this weather isn't easy. I've been soaked through and covered in mud the last few days, and I've decided I need more pairs of gardening gloves. Except it's not mud, it's soil. One of the things I have to do when growing and looking after a garden is check the soil pH. The level of pH describes how acid (sour/ericaceous) or alkaline (sweet) your soil is. Acid soil has a low pH and alkaline a high pH. The pH range is from 0 (very acid) to 14 (very alkaline). A pH of 7 is neutral. The pH level impacts on the nutrients that can be accessed by plants from the soil.
So why does it matter? Much of the time it won't, but you need to consider that:
there are some plants and some vegetables that are picky about the pH level;
if your soil is outside of the neutral range, then you will need to think about limiting the range of the things you grow more than you would with more neutral soil.
Given that there are so many things you can grow, by far the best thing to do is to go with the soil. You can adjust your soil's pH by adding lime (to make it more alkaline) or sulphur, (to make it more acid), but the soil will eventually revert to type. It really only becomes an issue if you really want to grow something that doesn't agree with your soil. For example, I've found a lovely scented camelia (Camelia "Spring Mist) I'd like to grow. I have a neutral (pH 7) soil, and camelias love acid. My solution is to find a beautiful pot and fill it with ericaceous compost and the camelia. Other acid loving flowers include azaleas and rhododendrons. The same will apply to acid loving fruit such as blueberries.
There's an easy way to assess your soil pH. What colour are your mophead or lacecap hydrangeas? If your hydrangeas are blue, then you have acid soil. In alkaline soil (pH>7), the hydrangeas are pink.
