Soil pH

This is the most misguided topic in agriculture today. Why? We have been conditioned for so long by US Agriculture and constituents to force soil chemistry into what we want it to be. We learned nutrients are only available to plants in a certain ph range. We took that to a level of control we know how to manipulate without consideration for what other natural biological processes we were harming. This is not the first or only example of this behavior in our history. We do it constantly. Permaculture teaches us to think about the whole and I happen to know the details of these processes from a formal education. Let’s break this down together.

To understand how to manipulate a system without causing more harm than good we need an understanding of all the components within. Biology, chemistry and physics with a little geology at times but really all the ologies compose “what is”. Since humans have a 1% knowledge base of what there is to know these things are best left to the soil biology who influence and in large part make the chemistry responsible for life to exist.

The question is what life because some plants need the acidity created by fungi as well as lower acidity created from loss of gas exchange. Some life needs alkalinity and the bacteria that drive environments to being what they favor. There are plants for almost all conditions and those that exists within the gradient of both extremes. In part all answers given here by others are correct pertaining to using organic matter to increase bacteria that make soil alkaline if we want to move away from acidity. That could be compost or it could be something sweet and soluble because bacteria eat simple carbon chains like sugars. To much to fast however can be a disaster, quite literally a catastrophic soil event triggering those organisms associated with world ending environments. These organisms do not promote plant growth but rather their function is to purify the soil for an ecological reset. What we should not be doing is forcing the environment to have the chemical makeup we think is ideal using synthetic chemistry and isolated salts. Big no brainer here when we look at history and current events leading to deforestation and reduced global diversity.

By mitigating soil in this way we are taking the place of the functions soil organisms perform thus making them obsolete. If we make any organism not needed because we are doing their job for the system those organisms will either die or leave the soil environment to find where their function is being called. We refer to this as reduced diversity. Since diversity is health on planet earth for all life within we are being self-destructive. This has been conditioned into us so heavily I recommend something of a 12 step plan to de-condition ourselves from our obsession with following suit in this regard.

Something along the lines of “it works if you work it”. Making and utilizing compost in a beneficial way is around 12 steps. Like giving up alcohol for sugar filled beverages we need to make sure we are not leaving one bad habit for another. Permaculture principles help with this. We just need to think about the whole. In doing so we become more beneficial to the whole which means we move away from being what we were no one likes to admit because the realization deforms an entire species living a self-glorified existence, our species as being parasitic.

Before answering is lime right for you with valid science and modality an agronomist would first need to know what the PH is and possibly use a penetrometer. If you have compaction and your soil lacks interstitial space for water and oxygen to diffuse into no amount of organic matter will help in a time frame that will be conducive to our goals. If we change it with chemistry the compaction still remains and our efforts and expense is wasted because it will return to what it was quickly with rainfall washing away the soluble inorganic salts and soluble synthetics.

Acidity made by fungi is a good thing if we want a forest or plants associated. If it’s because of compaction we need to induce interstitial space with a fork or by mechanical means to get organic matter into the surface layers to hold the spaces open for water and oxygen to penetrate until fungi can flocculate and aggregate … aka hold it in place with structure.

If you have fungal acidity and want to grow annuals which need more alkaline you just

need disturbance on the surface. The regenerative technique that people now are using is called harrowing. It’s what chickens do when they scratch the surface and what turkeys do as well in a forest allowing for ground cover to form. So really if you don’t know the details and don’t want to test, using chickens and a broad fork as a regular practice will speed up the evolution of your property and allow us to grow what we want without having to know all the daunting arguments that more often than not amount to how little we actually know. I mix worm castings in a bucket of chicken scratch feed and what ever plant I want to grow for food or soil health. They eat 20% and plant the rest by scratching and burying it. You can do this yourself with a spike roller, worm castings and chicken manure.

Listen to nature, it never lies. People do and say whatever favors their agenda. We are more parasitic than we realize. We need permaculture because it forces us to think about the whole. This is the driving force that caused Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to develop a design concept for growing food that utilizes and respects natural systems forming symbiosis between nature and humans.