pH Testing: What I Do, What I Don't, and Being Honest About It
Okay. I need to tell you something and I want you to not lose confidence in me right after I tell you.
I am not great at pH testing. Like, at all.
I bought a cheap probe a couple years ago, the kind you just stick in the ground and it gives you a number. Didn't trust it. Bought strips instead, the kind you mix with a soil-and-water slurry. Trusted those slightly more, but still felt like I was reading tea leaves half the time. Honestly, at this point I mostly just assume our soil is alkaline and hard-water heavy, because in Utah County that is true often enough that it's a safe bet, and I plan around it instead of chasing an exact number.
I say that up front because I think a lot of people quit before they even start because they feel like they need a soil science degree to plant a yard. You don't. You need a decent guess and a plan that doesn't fight your guess.
What I actually do
Here's my real process, not the fancy one.
Step one: look at what's already growing. If your neighbor's yard, the church strip, the median up by the point of the mountain, whatever, if the stuff growing there without help is lilac, sagebrush, that kind of tough character, that's telling you something. Alkaline soil grows a certain cast of characters around here. You don't need a test to notice a pattern.
Step two: check your water. If you've got hard water spots on your shower door or white crust on your faucets, that's calcium and minerals, and it means your irrigation water is probably adding to the alkaline situation every time you water. This matters more than people think. You're not just dealing with the dirt you started with, you're topping it off with hard water all summer.
Step three: if you want an actual number, get a cheap strip kit. They're a few dollars at any garden center. Mix a little soil with distilled water, dip the strip, compare the color. It won't be lab-precise, but it'll tell you if you're sitting around 7.5 to 8, which is a completely normal, boring, expected number for our valley. If that's what you get, you don't need to do anything else. You just plant like someone who lives here.
What I don't do: I don't send soil off to a lab. I don't buy sulfur or acidifiers to try to shift my whole yard's pH down. That's a losing fight against your water source, your native rock, and mother nature, and you'll be re-fighting it every single season. I'd rather pick plants that don't care.
The real opinion here
And that's genuinely my stance: stop trying to fix your soil and start picking plants that already like the soil you have. I know I said this in the amending-soil lesson too, and I'll probably say it again before we're done, because it's the thing that saves people the most money and heartbreak. Penstemon, yarrow, globemallow, rabbitbrush, sagebrush, most of the plants on our list this course, they evolved in alkaline dirt with hard water. You are not doing them a favor by trying to correct their soil into something neutral. You're just making extra work for yourself.
A caution, because this is the one place people get hurt
If you do go looking for sulfur or an acidifier at the garden center because you've got one plant you really want that needs more acidic soil, like a blueberry or certain azaleas, read the bag. Some of those products are genuinely harsh on skin and eyes, and a few are combustible in concentrated form if stored wrong. Gloves, and don't store it near anything flammable in your garage. Most of you won't need this stuff at all for this class, honestly, but if you go down that road for one special plant, don't just eyeball it.
The bulb story, because this is basically the same energy
Last fall I was running late for church and had forty crocus bulbs left to get in the ground. Twenty minutes, tops, before I had to leave. I did not test anything. I did not measure spacing carefully. I just jammed them in, and in my hurry I put probably half of them in upside down without realizing it until later.
About a third of them came up anyway.
That's kind of how I feel about pH testing for most home gardeners. You don't need it exact. You need it close enough, and then you need to just go plant the thing. The plants that are suited to this valley are more forgiving than the internet makes them sound. Perfect information was never the goal. A reasonable guess and a plant that matches it will get you most of the way there.
Before next time
Go check your water for hard water spots and take one honest look at what's thriving, unwatered, in a neighbor's yard or a strip of ground nobody babies. Bring what you notice to class, we'll use it.