Soil pH

Bruce, over the weekend I will test ours and let you know. I have never done ours before, it will be interesting to see what it comes out at. Don't forget I am on black loam, lucerne country.

David, as you know my family on Mum's side farmed a lot of your country in the first half of the 1900's yet I know very little about it except for the cattle property I owned and farmed at Lue. I used to take soil samples and send the plugs to a soil tester in Sydney who returned a fertiliser formula suitable. I don't know how much MO Super I bought for that property but it ran into $1000's. The cattle came off it in nice condition so it was worth the effort. It wasn't real dark soil but grew some good Lucerne along the creek flats. Will be interested in your results.

If you're growing lucerne well then the soil would most likely be a more neutral pH. Lucerne doesn't like strongly acid soil - usually because there are issues then with overavailability of aluminium. We have a good soil structure for lucerne but have never bothered attempting to plant it because it's expensive to establish and it wouldn't do well on our strongly acidic sub-soil.

Thanks Wendy, I'm a bit of a Lucerne fan myself. Can't remember ever taking PH tests on any of the properties I grew it. Basically Lue up near David and Kew north of Taree. We had the bank give way at the river exposing the Lucerne roots and couldn't believe how far they went down.

Today I collected 3 double hands full of our soil and the same quantity neutral PH potting mix. It tested out at 4.5, but after adding half a handful of Mudgee Dolomite and mixing very well it read 7. This gives me an idea how much to add to get the desirable 6.5 to 7 for planting understocks in prepared holes.