A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2005 Anyone Willing to Help a Struggling Biology Student?

HI!

I'm testing how pH affects the germination and growth of soybeans

I'm going to have 3 plants, one with acidic soil, one with basic soil and one with neutral soil

Can anyone tell me how to raise or lower the pH of soil?

"3.6 ounces of sulfur per square yard acidity"
and
"8 ounces of lime per square yard for alkalinity"

^awesome help, but the thing is, I'm having a lot of trouble converting to centimetres and milliletres!



I have my materials ready:
A pH tester (not sure if it's working)
Sulfur Powder
Dolomite Lime Pellets
Potting Soil

Considering you all are seasoned and able gardeners unlike myself, I hope you can give me some pointers and hopefully I can ace this project!

I feel so stupid! I chose such a tough topic for my project

Hiya! Wish I could help with more than this, but, Google has an awesome tool for conversions - I use em all the time for lbs/ozs. Anywho, not sure what you need to convert into centimeters/milimeters but you can do a search like this:

1 inch in centimeters
just replace the 1 with whatever. You can also change the inches to feet or whatever, and the centimeters to milimeters, etc....you get the picture Hope that helps a bit.

Good luck!

Thanks, Mary, that's really helpful!

Now I've managed to get the neutral and acidic soil ready, but I can't seem to get the alkaline soil past a pH of 7

The lime neutralizes the soil, but doesn't manage to get it any more basic

Any suggestions on getting the pH into the 8-9 range?

Not sure about specific acidity levels, but this site might help you find the info you need

This might be of some help.
Changing The pH of Your Soil .

And, some conversion.

3.6oz = 102.05grams

8.0oz = 226.79grams

1 square yard = 0.836 square meter.

You might want to check/test the pH of your potting soil before adding sulfur or lime.

Soybean will do well in a fertile soil in the range of pH 6.0 to pH 6.8.

Goodluck.

from what I understand the lime takes 6 months to a year to affect the soil unlike the quick response you get from the sulfur(sp). If you google on this site bill has a fact sheet that explains it better than I do.

Thanks for the info, not good news though!

I'm thinking now that I should buy a soil that is already alkaline. Any suggestions?

Thank you papito, that's excellent info

Thanks for the quick replys! This forum is the best!

for the future...


convert

Thank you

Are there soils that have high pH's that I can buy?

That's a very good question and I don't know what the answer is. I'm sorry.

This is impossible! I've been almost everywhere I can think of and no nurseries or hardware stores have hydrated lime

I'm going nuts!

I know that hydrated lime is very caustic, maybe I should be looking in different stores?

You can make soil acidic by adding Miracid, an evergreen fertilizer. Or HollyTone, another.

As for basic soil, try searching for "quickLime" or CaOH, calcium hydroxide.

Also, a cheap pH tester kit will tell you when you reach the desired level.

Go check out FEED MILL.....
They usually have all sorts of things
for fields for farmers to grow crops.

Thank you weezie, but is Feed Mill an American business, I'm in Toronto

TK is right in that lime takes ages to affect the soil, the dolomite you are using is somewhat faster though. (Being pellets may slow it down more. Crush it finely and try dissolving it in water and applying to the soil. Not sure if it actually dissolves as such.
Spent mushroom compost is a good growing medium/soil additive which is very alkaline. It can be obtained from mushroom farms and/or rural supply stores sometimes have it.
Worm castings are also alkaline.
Alternatively, you could grow the plants using hydroponics techniques. Make it an addition to your experiment and i'm sure you can alter the water alkalinity quite quickly.

Datsdewody,
FEED MILLS are places that you go to find
FEED at to feed animals, such as cows, horse's,
rabbits, chickens, ducks... etc...

Do you have a place/type like that to feed your animals???

I'll see if I can PM some regulare Canadian members here and see if they can come up with a name to a general type feed mill...

So is compost.... it's almost an
alkaline base, when finished.. even when
you put a ton of "acid" type materials in..

YESS!!!

I bought a pH testing-tubey-thingy and I crushed up the Dolomite pellets and so far, I've got the pH up to 8!

This is awesome! You all are amazingly helpful and smart!

Whoops about the feed mills thing...thanks though! (d'oh!)



Ok everyone sing with me:



haha don't ever change, guys!

Bye and thank you!

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