by Mike Hansen
Taken from LCBS May 2010 Newsletter
(Original article written in 1987, updated in 1988 and in 1999)
It is with some reluctance that I write this article because so much has already been said and written about pH. In some respects it's a little like the old cliché, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." I have been talking about soil pH since I moved to Austin, TX, and for the past thirteen years, I have been trying to do something about it. Now, at the urging of a friend, I am writing about it.
To understand the significance of pH and its relationship to plants, it helps to understand what pH is. pH is a unit of measure that indicates the relative acidity or alkalinity of a substance. pH is measured on a scale of 0 to 14 with 0 being very acid, 14 being very alkaline and 7 as neutral (distilled water). The measurement along the pH scale is logarithmic which means that the each value along the scale is 10 times more concentrated than the previous value. For example, if we are comparing three samples of water one with a pH of 6, another with a pH of 5 and the third with a pH of 4, the sample with a pH of 5 is 10 times more concentrated than the sample with a pH of 6 and the sample with a pH of 4 is 10 times stronger than the pH 5 sample and 100 times stronger than the pH 6 sample. The same relationship holds true on the alkaline side of the scale.
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