Xtremehorticulture

Acidifying Soil and Water Can Be Beneficial for Desert Soils and Sprays

Q. Have you ever heard of adding vinegar or citric acid when fertilizing plants in our area? A. Quite a few people have thought about it or tried it but the positive impact on the soil is short-lived and is usually considered not worth doing. Gardeners realize our soil is much more alkaline than the ideal garden soil. Methods used to acidify soils are frequent gardening topics. This includes the addition of acids such as acetic or vinegar and adding sulfur. Sulfur granules can sit on the surface of a desert soil for months or even years if it never comes in contact with water or is not ground finely. This does not help lower soil pH.             Our soils and our tap water from Lake Mead carry a lot of lime so the addition of anything to the soil to make it more acidic is usually short-lived.  A fairly effective long-term method for improving our soil is the addition of compost or other sources of organic matter that decompose, acidifying the soil as it does so.             However, adding weak acids to the soil is a short-term solution. How much acid to add to a soil is another question altogether. Much of that depends on the chemistry of the soil itself and varies from soil to soil.             Acidifying water used for foliar applications of a pesticide or fertilizer is a different story. This water should always be acidified to pH around 6.5 before adding the pesticide or fertilizer. The easiest way to measure this pH is with litmus paper, the type used for swimming pools or aquariums. Another option would be to use distilled or reverse osmosis water instead.

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Will Green Light Chelate Cure Iron Chlorosis in Highly Alkaline Soils

Q. I used a product called Green Light. It contains chelated iron, copper and zinc for correcting plants that are yellow. Is this similar to the chelate you talk about for our soils? A. I know the Green Light chelate product and it will not be very effective in our tap water which is alkaline or our well water. It will also not work in most of our soils because they are also too alkaline. This product will work if you adjust the water with some acid and use it as a spray on the leaves of the plant. If you have a gallon of water you can put a small amount of vinegar or pool acid used to adjust alkalinity of pool water. Test the water with some pool pH strips or a kit if you are using pool acid. If you are using vinegar, two or three tablespoons of vinegar in a gallon of water should be enough. After adding the acid and mixing the water you can add chelates to the spray solution. Follow the label directions and then add two more things to your mix. First, add a small amount of liquid fertilizer or a powdered fertilizer that dissolves in the water. Secondly, add about a teaspoon of liquid detergent to the finished spray mix. Make sure everything is dissolved and thoroughly mixed. This spray solution must be used very soon after it is prepared. Use it all up and don’t save any of it. It will probably not last. Use this mixture any time temperatures are cool. Only spray long enough until you begin seeing this liquid spray run off of the leaf surface. Spray both sides of the leaves; once over the tops of the leaves and a second time with the spray pointing up so the undersides of the leaves are sprayed as well. The addition of a liquid detergent to the mix will help move the solution inside the leaf. The small amount of fertilizer will make the chelate more effective. If leaves have already become quite yellow, spray them once every few days for about four or five applications.

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Removing White Salt Deposits on Walls With Acid

Q. Our backyard block wall has some white stains on it. These appear where the sprinkler water hits the wall and I want to remove them.  I have read on-line to use things like diluted muriatic acid, but I don’t want to kill the plants my wife has throughout her garden.  How can I clean the stains, and can I treat the walls to protect from more stains forming Salt deposit on slumpstone wall when plants are being irrigated by bubblers. Salt in the water is carried up the wall where it evaporates, leaving behind the salts. The other side of the wall does not have sprinklers hitting it either. A. These are salts remaining from either those sprinklers or water from the soil wicking up the wall. Our soils contain quite a bit of salt as well as our water. Water coming from Lake Mead carries about 1 ton of salts for every 326,000 gallons. It sounds fairly dilute but it is not.              Our soils vary much more in salt and can be removed by leaching. The salt in the water of course is consistent. The combination of the two can mean some pretty high salt levels. Salt dissolves readily in water and when the water evaporates from the wall, it leaves the salt behind. These are probably the salt deposits you’re seeing on the wall. Even drip irrigation can cause problems like this since the water can wick through and into porous surfaces.             You don’t have to use muriatic acid but you can use and acid, even vinegar to help remove it. The major concern with plants is having the acid fall on foliage. This will damage the plant. Of course the best way to prevent it is to not use overhead irrigation.             In the case of drip irrigation, put the emitters on the opposite side of the plant from the wall, not next to the wall. Perhaps there is a treatment to the wall that could prevent this from happening. I don’t know of any.

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