This year is our first year in our house, and the first year we’ve used this garden space. The raised beds in our garden were a big selling point of the house. Last winter we bought our seed for the year, the garden tools we were lacking, and some soil test kits. Busy with life, we got much of the garden planted late (not terribly late, just later than we wanted) and skipped the soil tests. Bad idea.
About half way through the growing season, the lackluster performance of some of our veggies prompted us to pull out the test kits and check our soil out. The most important discovery is that throughout our garden the soil PH is far higher than it should be, over 8 in some places. Most plants perform best in a range of 6 to 7, with some acid loving plants performing well as low as 5. An elevated soil PH can keep plants from absorbing available nutrients, which inhibits growth, invites pest problems, decreases yield, and makes the food produced less rich in micronutrients.
