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Talked to a master gardener and now I feel dumb about my soil
I was at the local nursery in Portland last Saturday buying compost and this older lady saw me loading bags of cheap garden soil. She asked if I ever tested my soil pH and I laughed it off. Turns out she's a master gardener with 30 years of experience and she spent 10 minutes explaining how I've been fighting my own dirt. Now I'm wondering how many plants I killed just because I never checked the pH. Has anyone else had a simple gardening habit that turned out to be totally wrong?
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karencampbell1mo ago
You got hit with knowledge bombs at the nursery, happens to the best of us. I killed three blueberry bushes before i figured out i was basically planting them in concrete dirt with how alkaline my yard is. After that i bought a cheap soil test kit at the hardware store and felt like an idiot realizing it took 5 minutes to check something i'd been ignoring for years. The master gardener probably saved you more heartbreak than you even know yet, at least now you can stop guessing and start actually growing stuff.
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bennett.harper1mo ago
I read somewhere that blueberries need like a pH of 4.5 to 5.5 and most people just stick them in regular dirt and wonder why they look sad. Same thing happened to me with my hydrangeas until I found out the soil pH literally changes their flower color. You probably saved a bunch of future plants by learning this now.
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kimfisher1mo ago
My neighbor once spent a whole summer trying to figure out why his rhododendrons were turning yellow, and he was out there with every fertilizer and spray from the garden center. Turns out his soil was too alkaline, just like the blueberry problem. I told him to try some coffee grounds and pine needle mulch, which is an old trick my grandmother used on her azaleas. He thought I was pulling his leg, but after a few months those leaves greened right up. Funny how such a small thing like pH can make or break a plant, but nobody thinks to check it until the damage is done.
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