HelpfulGardener.com

D-Licious wrote:

ReptileAddiction wrote:It will kill them here without protection. The other day I had to scrape my windshield.

It hasn't been THAT cold here, but it has been cooler than it's been in the last couple years and it seems like it's cooler for longer periods of time.

Yes it has been that cold. Here in winter you can grow tomatos but they will grow so slowly and you will get so few tomatos (if any) it is not worth it. Wait till the spring and plant them when it is warm enough. The peppers will I can almost guarantee do nothing. Your area might be slightly warmer than mine but it is just to cold to do them without protection.[/I]

Reptile - just to be sure I checked with the Ag Center on the pH issue. Optimum pH for most vegetables is 6 - 6.5. Many necessary nutrients lock up and become insoluble over 6.5. Home test kits are not reliable (strips and tablet kits). pH meters are accurate when compared to lab results.

That is one of the reasons people have problems with plants in concrete planters. The concrete leaches lime and raises the pH. I had a couple of clients with concrete planters that had never been able to get any thing to grow in. I lined the planters with garbage bags that had holes punched in it for drainage. I lined the bottom of the bag with gravel before adding the soil. Magic! Plants survived. Hmm I never did reveal my trick to my clients. They just thought I had a magic touch. Oh well.

DoubleDogFarm wrote:https://www.agiweb.org/education/aapg/in ... sforpH.pdf

woah, go one DDF !!!

Thanks (insert thumbs up emoticon)

Very interesting, Eric! There are a few surprises there. I did not know potatoes like it so acid, more even then blackberries. (For some reason they didn't put blueberries on the list, but I assume they would be right there with blackberries and cranberries.) That may account for why my container potatoes have not been real productive. I will acidify this year and see what happens.

Some of it is controversial. They have rosemary in the acid liking column. Here is what I have always known about rosemary and told others:

To grow rosemary in pots, select potting soil with a minimum of peat moss, which is acid, as rosemary likes an alkaline pH. Add enough sand for superb drainage.
https://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/2 ... w-rosemary

It has worked for me. When I was trying to overwinter rosemary indoors and only had peat soil, I added baking soda to the water to keep it happy. Worked well for me and I had killed rosemary before. But I was also restricting water and misting, so maybe it wasn't really the baking soda.

However, when I saw this, I went looking now and I found people saying about rosemary:
6 - 7.5
6.8 but tolerates up to 8.5
5-6
6 - 7.5
6- 8.5
6 -7
about 7/ neutral

So apparently this stuff is not an exact science or it depends on other conditions or it depends on your rosemary cultivar.

Incidentally here's a more comprehensive listing I found:
https://www.gardenexpress.com.au/growing ... guide.html

There is a lot of good information here, I have grown for years and learned a bit from your post here, with out sounding overly sweet, there is a lot of knowledge here.
Elizabeth I have always used the strips, what PH meters do you think work well?
DD good link.
I do one more thing to check my soil.
I fill a jar about 1/2 way with soil and add water, shake it up and after it settles look to see what the mix of sand clay and organics are. Also when you add potting soil it often has un-composted browns in it, as browns compost they suck nitrogen from the soil. Things like PH and calcium can effect the uptake of nutrients, you need minerals and as J said clay has them, clay also holds water.
I tried the pots and starter pots that say they break down, the roots never could grow past them.

This year before I planted my maters I ripped up the peat pot and put it into the soil. At the end of the season I still found chunks of it

Well, Reptile; I'm a believer. My peppers are alive, but they aren't doing anything! The chili peppers are still white on the side that the reflective screen was on. The green pepper has one under-developed fruit at the top of it. The yellow pepper is just there with the banana pepper... just alive. I'm glad I took them all out of those "biodegrable" pots. They do look better. My tomatoes are starting to flower, but I'm not going to hold my breath for any fruit. All my basil died (except for one sweet basil). The thais have all dried out and the overcrowding I did witht the sweet basil didn't work out (like everyone said it wouldn't); except for one.

My cold weather crops on the otherhand are doing great! Lettuces, spinach, cilantro, brocolli and celery are all doing great. Rosemary is as well too. Teragon looks the same size, but with two little yellow flowers at it's top. The new growth on the strawberries looks super strong and healthy, but the damaged leaves aren't getting any better. The strawberries are also starting to flower.

So at this point, I don't know if it's the short amounts of daylight, or the phosphates in the fertilizer, but as mentioned, lots of the plants are flowering. The cilantro, celery, lettuces and brocolli are the only things not flowering right now. Which is good; I'm not complaining. But I begin to wonder.

Since my first test I've been very concious of my water pH now. I pH it down to 6.5. I fill my reseviour with RO water, add nutes, check pH, adjust and then water. Seems to be working for the time being. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow.

Well if you haven't noticed already, I'm out of bandwidth for the month so none of my pictures show; but I found this this evening and I thought it was interesting: https://www.sandiego.gov/water/quality/w ... ness.shtml

BTW, my pictures have been uploaded to my gallery, but no one will be able to see them until next month I believe when I get more bandwidth.