Soil pH

Darren and Brian Hefty, are agronomists with a television show called Ag PhD. I lifted a clip after learning about the importance of soil pH. "Soil pH is the very most important thing on your soil test. With most crops the ideal pH is roughly 6.8, so maybe just on the slightly acid side of seven. Neutral is seven. Anything below that is acid, anything above that is alkaline. 6.8 is the ideal pH for corn, soybeans, wheat so the closer we can get to 6.8, the higher yield we should be able to achieve with our crops and a lot of that has to do with nutrient availability. When you are talking about high pH soils, you are going to have tie up of certain nutrients. When you are looking at your soil tests, you might say man I'm putting on the right amounts of nutrients but I'm not getting the right result on my farm. Often times soil pH is the reason why. Usually if you have high pH, you have excess calcium in the soil and phosphorus becomes an issue. Let's say you have an 8.2 soil pH, you'll end up with that free calcium tying up some of your phosphorus and you will have calcium phosphate and that's insoluble. It can't even get into the plant because it's not in a form that the plant can use. Same thing happens when you get real low soil pH. You might tie up with aluminum or some other nutrients out there, it's just not a good deal." Google Darren and Brian Hefty and you will come across their videos which are very informative.