Use distilled water. Distilled is distilled, but bottled won't do it.

Your range will be taken care of with no more than 7-9 strips. Your indoor finicky plants will like the flush of distilled water as well when you are all done, so benefits all the way around. You can do the 5 minute thing, and then one at 30 mins, and I'd do one after most settling (1 hr). Take 3 representative samples and that should get you in a good range. Don't freak out about, say, a 6.8 vs a 7.0.

Dan

If you use rain water you will be measuring the pH of that rainwater, not your soil. If you use tap water you will be measuring the pH of your tap water, not your soil. To test the pH of your soil that soil needs to be very dry, very little to no moisture in that soil, and then you mix in distilled water, which has a pH of 7.0 and see what the paper does. What that kind of test will not tell you is what you need to do to correct any problem indicated. Whether you need to add calcitic or dolomitic lime to correct any problem that might exist is not indicated along with how much would be needed.

I haven't seen any for sale here, but when I worked overseas, we could buy a German brand of pH paper strips that were remarkably more accurate - a box would have a range from, say, 6.5 to 6.9. Other boxes covered other pH ranges. Certainly a lot easier.

Aquarium supply places, even WalMart has pH testing paper.

(When I worked in a lab we always used a German product, perhaps the one that david52 mentions. Really good stuff but to get the correct result one must adjust the temperature** and have good quality control procedures for water and all sorts of things that people here don't want to think about, let alone practice. And for hobbyists, why bother?)

** For example, did you know that the pH number is only accurate at 25°C?

The math can be found here: A solution is neutral at pH = 7.000 only at a temperature of 25°C

xyzxyz

i know what kind of lime to use n stuff, but, my pH is somewhere between 4.5 and 5.0....i know that much, how will i be able to get a ph 'number' to put with the color of the test strip, cuz it didn't come w/ a color chart, it's just a tube of strips....

ooo !!! Are you sure? Ph of 4.5 to 5.0 is to sour. You can only grow potatoes in that soil. Check it again or send a sample to a lab, to make sure.

As I understand, reducing acidity (raising ph) is not an easy task and cannot be done right away. It will take years.

Adding garden lime is perhaps the only option. But you cannot do it while growing things, fertilizing. The best time would be in the fall and early spring. Because, it takes a longe time for lime to change the ph of soil.

The ball park number for most garden vegetable is ph=6.4.
99% of vegetables can thrive at that ph. Most can grow at ph of 5.7 - 6.8.

Since it takes about 6 months for lime to begin to correct soil pH problems the best time to apply that is in the fall.

haha, yeah, i'm sure. i've had 3 soil samples done, by 3 different labs (U of KY, a lab in Memphis TN, and i sent a sample to Soilguy who had it tested at TX A$M.)

and that range of pH is good, cuz that's where i actually HAVE put lime down. In my backyard, where i am starting a vegtable garden, i started on a spot that had never had any amendments and in the 2 years i lived here didn't even have grass or anything growin on it, that sample was 4.0!!

so yeah, i got my work cut out for me

West9491, if you really got some real "litmus paper" there will not be a number associated with it. Llitmus is a coloring material (obtained from lichens) that turns red in acid solutions and blue in alkaline solutions; used as a very rough acid-base indicator.

Some people get some pH test strips and call them "litmus paper". Perhaps the marketing people even sold them with that label.

[By the way, an aside on people using gardening forums; pH is
a property of a solution. Gardening jargon uses the term "soil pH". More serious sites more correctly refer to the "pH of the soil solution". Soil pH is so ingrained in gardening jargon that some sites, NASA for example, will title their page "Soil pH" and then proceed to discuss "pH of the soil solution".]

west9491, where, geologically speaking, are you located that you'd have such low pH?

I'm interested in a general sense, I live with alkaline soils, but to get any thing that extreme (on the other side of the scale) you'd have to dig down into the old sea bed formations.

I saw something similar in disturbed mangrove soils, a chemical reaction between long - sequestered silt exposed to air, resulting in pH values below 4. Not much grew there, either.

I have never seen any litmus paper come without a scale to compare the paper to and most have such a narrow range to test that they are next to useless unless you already know what you are testing for, so a waste of money.
According the Wests page (click on his name of the "My Page" thingy next to his name) his interests include Tennessee Gardening so probably he is from Tennesse.

I was unaware that Tennessee soil commonly has pH values of 4.0. Thanks.

Some notes on litmus paper and other pH indicator paper.

Litmus is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from lichens, .... It is often absorbed onto filter paper. The resulting piece of paper or solution with water becomes a pH indicator (one of the oldest, 1300 AD, Spain), used to test materials for acidity. Blue litmus paper turns red under acidic conditions and red litmus paper turns blue under basic (i.e. alkaline) conditions, the color change occurring over the pH range 4.5-8.3 (at 25°C). Neutral litmus paper is purple in color.

pH indicator paper, frequently sold as "litmus paper" is a mixture containining 10 to 15 different dyes (erythrolitmin (or erythrolein), azolitmin, spaniolitmin, leucoorcein and leucazolitmin). These products would have a chart of colors to be useful.

pH of 4.5 to 5 is perfect for blueberries.

actually i'm .5 mi. across the state line, so i'm in KY..
the cleared portion of my property is pretty much all subsoil on top(the top soil and lumber was removed and sold when whoever excavated the land) so i think that might explain the pH. actually in three soil tests i've recieved ph of 4.0 4.5 and 4.8, so there's the ball park.

If the topsoil is gone the ground is not going to be fertile.

Did you have a lab do any of the soil tests? What did it say about the nutrients in the soil? (P, K, Ca, etc)

Are there worms? I'm guessing if you focus on amending/adding organic matter to the soil the pH will take care of itself.

This is an old thread, I see that. However I have a question about this. I see a lot of you recommending using distilled water, but why? Isn't water also a component of soil? What I mean to say is, shouldn't you include the water that you would normally use to water your garden in the test? I would think that if you pour acidic water on a soil that is alkaline, it would make it more neutral. Am I wrong on that?

I'm just trying to understand this because I really do not know. TIA!

My lawn n garden gets watered, mostly, by rain. If things dry up and die, oh well, more soil work and mulching will need to be done....But with that said, rain being an acidic liquid, I guess it would only work against the liming I've done?????

I think you would use the distilled water so it doesn't give you a false test result and cause you to do nothing or too much of something. By the way, when I posted this a few years ago, I forgot to mention that the litmus paper I got was from a pharmacy, I lost them over time, but I think they were like 5 dollars for 50 or 100. They asked me if I needed acidic or alkaline when I asked for them. Obviously, given my soil's acidity I got the acidic type.

But how will they work? With my soil being acidic, If i did the test, What would I see???

Distilled water has a neutral pH, 7.0, which is why it is used for testing purposes, the water will not skew your test results.
Using Litmus paper, a cheap pH meter, a home test kit, may give you an idea of what your soils pH is, although some research finds these tests can be off by a significant amount, but they do not provide enough information about your soils pH to correct any problem. If your soil is 5.2 pH and you want it to be 6.2 how much, and which kind, of lime do you spread? Do you use Calcitic or Dolomitic lime?
There are some gardeners that test their soils pH monthly which is neither desireable or necessary since anything you do to change your soils pH will take some time to work and see results. Spend the money for a good, reliable soil test from a good soil testing lab from whom you should also get information about what to do to correct any problems you may have.

Based on previous soil tests I do know that I need to use dolomitic lime. I'm so far off from neutral, and again based on soil tests that have told me how much lime to use, I got an idea about how much, what kind, and when to use, but it would be a simpler way to periodically check my ph status.

Hi West9491: Using red cabbage juice is more accurate than litmus since it has a wider range of colors: green, bluish green, blue, purple, violet, pink, fuschia, and red.

I wrote the procedure to test your soil using 50 cents of red cabbage and $1 bottle of distilled water. See the link below:

Here is a link that might be useful: Cheapest way to test soil pH using red cabbage

A soil test for pH once a year would be more than adequate because of the time needed to correct that soils pH. If adequate amounts of the right type of lime are added to the soil that should adjust the soils pH for a fairly long time and more lime each year should not be necessary.
That all said my soil, which initially tested at pH 5.7 is now testing regularly at pH 7.2 without the addition of any lime, only compost and other forms of organic matter. The compost, by the way, includes large volumes of Oak leaves since those are the predominent tree around here.

Down about page five or so of this pdf file, DIY pH Indicator, there are illustrated step-by-step instructions for using red-cabbage juice as a pH indicator which I agree may be as good as any nonprofessional test.

I agree with kimmsr on both counts: you don't need to test very often since the changes take place slowly, and compost will also help bring soil toward neutral pH.

One thing about pH paper is that the color of fine soil particles suspended in the water of the sample can skew the apparent color.

I kinda feel sorry for the earlier poster from '09 who was trying to measure soil pH with only a red-blue litmus paper. It will only give you "above or below neutral", which is fairly useless to the gardener.

Posted by toxcrusadr 5 (My Page) on
Tue, May 28, 13 at 12:11

One thing about pH paper is that the color of fine soil particles suspended in the water of the sample can skew the apparent color.

At the university lab where I studied we filtered the solution before using pHydron strips. Today I was reading another method to avoid particulates. Don't dip the paper in the water. Just touch the tip of the pHydron paper to the water surface. Read the pH from the color of the water that is wicked up the paper. This is reported to work with saturated soil in the palm of your hand.

Good idea, should work if one has the right range of pH paper. :-]

Thanks for replies. I haven't had a soil test, in a couple years, but still have a good idea about how much liming needs to be done. I have finally found a more economical way of doing it, too. I found a concrete company that delivers on a spreader truck for 40 dollars a ton. I can calculate how big of an area that one ton should cover based on my last soil test. But I may go with two tons since I have two acres of cleared land. Also better make sure it's dolomitic.....

If I DID apply lime according to a soil test's directions, would I not have to fool with it for a while?
Lime has kinda always been my achilles heel: I got too much land to lime with a small spreader, plus buying that crap at lowes gets expensive.

My soil tests as a PH of 7.0 other than for potatoes which I do not grow, what should I do?

Thanks