How do YOU lower pH?

Leo in N E Illinois

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It seems that my total alkalinity is quite high, the test strips that I have now aren’t very precise. I don’t know that this picture will help, but it definitely seems to suggest that my TA is quite high. My attempts at bringing the pH down haven’t had much of any effect on the TA. So what does one do in this situation?

Donovan, Because you are on a private well, you might want to get your water tested, so you know what you are really dealing with. Private wells can be all over the place for water quality, depending on which aquifer layer they were drilled into.

Ohio State University is your local Land Grant university. The AG Extension offices are in Portsmouth, Carrollton, and Woodsfield, OH. They can provide water testing services. It will not be free, but knowing what you are dealing with is important. You want TDS, and Total Alkalinity. Cost should be around $40 for TA and $20 for TDS. If you are drinking your well water you might want the potability tests, usually offered as a package for $100 to $200. The water potability tests DO NOT include Total Alkalinity, so you need to order that ala carte. The Extension Office has its own lab where they can run the samples, but they may also have a list of private labs in your county that do work for your local farmers. The private labs will be quicker turn around time, both will be priced very similar.

If you tell the Extension Agent you are considering starting a Landscape Nursery, and are interested in your water quality for that reason, they will fall all over themselves trying to help you. If you tell then you are a home hobby bonsai grower, they might steer you to the "home gardening expert" which will get you the watered down "gardening book" low quality information. Ask to talk to the Landscape Nursery expert. Or tell them you are starting an orchard. The "Fruits and Nuts" agent will be able to steer you to the right information. What ever you do, avoid getting the "Master Gardener", I find their level of expertise to be abysmally poor. Some are good, majority rely on information first published by Kew Gardens in 1880. If they tell you a 10-10-10 fertilizer is balanced, and good for you trees, you know you are dealing with a "gardener" and not with a trained scientist or a trained Ag Extension agent. (yes, I am insulting the Master Gardener system, they need to up the quality of their information, they need to incorporate plant nutrition science that has been published from research done more recently than 1970 into their education programs).

If your total alkalinity is less than 250 mg/liter as calcium carbonate, your plant nutrition problems most likely have nothing to do with pH. For all but really sensitive plants like carnivorous plants, you can use the water as is without adjusting pH.

If your total alkalinity is less than 600 mg/liter as calcium carbonate this is considered "adequate" for commercial landscape nursery use. You can compensate for the high alkalinity by choices of potting media, acid fertilizer and soil amendments, for example adding elemental sulfur.

Ohio gets regular rainfall. I keep a 55 gallon barrel full simply by setting out 6 pails, 3 gallons each, open, scattered around the back yard. After a rain, I empty the 6 pails into the 55 gallon drum. I start in March or April, by May the drum is full, and am usually able to use rain water for my 15 azaleas most of the summer. The other trees will get either rain water or tap water depending on how much rain water I have on hand. I use tap water for all the trees, when I apply liquid fertilizer. So my trees get rain water a couple times a week and tap water maybe once or twice a week. Collecting rain water is not that difficult. You can plumb a group of barrels into your roof gutter downspouts, my brother waters a fairly large garden most of the time with water from his roof.

Quite honestly, many are making their lives unnecessarily complicated worrying about pH, when their water is has acceptable TDS and Total Alkalinity. If you enjoy the complexity, fine, but most don't really understand what they are doing, or the why they are fooling around with pH.

Akadama, Kanuma, composted pine bark, composted douglas fir bark, composted bark in general, peat sifted to remove fines, all these components help to lower the pH of your potting media. Pumice & Lava are naturally slightly acidic, but have low CEC capacity, so they don't change the alkalinity much at all. Soil additives, for example top dressing with elemental sulfur one to 4 times per year is another way to lower the pH of a potting mix. Elemental sulfur slowly dissolves in water, not into sulfuric acid, but rather sulfonic or sulfurous acids, one less oxygen and considerably more mild, kind and gentle on your plant roots.

In my opinion Turface is a terrible product to use if you have high total alkalinity. There are others that use it, I do not use it.

One of the reasons commercial landscape nurseries use a bark & peat blend as their potting media is that the natural decomposition of the bark and peat is acidic enough that they can use most municipal and well water without having to adjust pH or worry about total alkalinity. (up to the limits I cited above).

So you can design a potting mix that works with your water. You can increase the amount of rain water you use. Between the two, you should be able to grow nice trees without having to worry about pH.
 
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Leo in N E Illinois

The Professor
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You where true, I always think my water is at 7'4 but this is the water where it's collect.

So they add javel and it Will be above 8 at least

But didn't found any infos about the ph after treatment. Drinkable water.

I know a guy who add white vinegar for it's cactus.

Electrical conductivity is often used as a substitute for Total Dissolved Solids. The unique chemistry of every water source means the conductivity must be first calibrated against standards. I do not know what the conversion factor would be to make sense of the measurement for you water. Sorry I can not help from the information provided.
 

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My well water is a bit sodic and alkaline. I have 1000L tank in which I add battery acid till pH is about 4 - 4.5. I also add some K sulphate and Mg sulfate to balance the cations some. I then use this to water my trees.
 
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