Quote:
Originally Posted by Snarkie
The one that I use was manufactured by Rapitest, and I have had nothing but good experiences with it. I know there's a lot of discussion on here regarding their accuracy, but I rely on mine.
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Apparently the soils or soil mixes you are testing are devoid of clay. My experience is that the Rapitest meters work great in commercial bagged potting mixes but terrible where clay soils have been mixed in. This is due to the magneto-electric nature of the device.
Further, I would caution against the concept from PR Giants that bananas work well in all pH's. His experiences are with pH < 7 and water supplied by precipitation, whereas in the continental U.S. we are dealing with municipal water supplies with pH >= 7 and often less than adequate precipitation (although those across the southern U.S. have had a remarkable year for rainfall).
If the majority of your water supply comes from municipal or well-water supplies, then I recommend you test your soil and your water supply. The pH of your irrigation water
will set the pH of your soil. Considering the total amount of time and expense you will put into your plant the cost of pH tests is a small percentage (note that a soil lab will test pH for far less than a full analysis).
Giving your plants urine or sulfur soil supplements will put them on a pH rollercoaster ride: down, up, down, up. I believe in these cases it is nonsense when fertigation is so easy.
Have a look at the following chart. It's clear that in mineral soils the availability of certain minerals is greatly diminished below 6.0 (60 on the chart) and also above 7.0. Now it is true that some plants do not want these minerals -- for example northern blueberries (esp. lowbush) prefer acidic soils because they do not want the exempted minerals. But for bananas, the more ideal range is pH 6.1 to 6.3.
