V
11

Spent $80 on a soil test kit and it showed me what I was doing wrong

I kept having issues with my indoor ferns. They would get brown tips and just look sad. I was watering right, giving them light, but something was off. I bought a basic soil test kit online for about eighty bucks. It checked the pH and key nutrients. Turns out my tap water was making the soil way too alkaline for them. I had no idea. Now I use filtered water and add a bit of peat moss to the mix. The change in just a few weeks was huge. New growth looks healthy and green. Has anyone else found a simple fix like this that turned things around for a specific plant type?
3 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In
3 Comments
rowanw11
rowanw1129d ago
That's a great find with the test kit! Just a small thing, peat moss is actually pretty acidic, so adding it would help lower a high pH, not raise it. It's perfect for fixing alkaline soil from tap water. I had the same lightbulb moment with my blueberries in pots. Their leaves turned red and they just stopped growing. The soil was way off, and a bit of peat made all the difference for them too.
7
rileymartinez
What specific pH level did your tap water end up being?
6
ericw93
ericw9329d ago
Mine tested at 7.2, so I just got a filter.
5