Ashes can help with the pH of your acid soil and they will provide some other nutrients as well (this is kinda old fashon thing to put on the garden.) Lime should help too. You need to bring the pH up somehow. Paper, sawdust, cardboard, rice hulls, any yard wastes people get rid of, can all be useful for your soil. If you have some other space you can grow some other cover/forage type crops that you can cut down and use the material in the area you are trying to improve. One trick is when that water repellent soil finally gets moist, quickly cover it with some moist mulch material so that it can remain moist. I've noticed water repellent sand here during the dry season. It can be quite intriguing and frustraiting sometimes. The moisture thing is one of the primary reasons people mulch. (Many people know nothing about building up their soil and mulching is for decoration and to conserve water.) I think a huge amount of the improvement I've seen after mulching poor soil is that the soil has now spent conciderable time being consistently moist and life has moved back in.

Some parts of the planet have soils that are derived from eroded limestone, and these soils have so much calcium and magnesium that they rarely require any supplementation. The calcium and magnesium comes from seawater, that was metabolized by ancient marine life, and formed into shells. Here in southern Wisconsin, our local soil has a pH of 7.6, and it's high in both calcium and magnesium. We have two subsoil layers of limestone, and our tap water is full of dissolved limestone. In the northeast region of the USA, the soils are derived from eroded granite, and the levels of calcium and magnesium are lower. Parts of the western USA have been covered with thick layers of volcanic ash, and the soil has more sulfur, which lowers pH, over time. Since rainfall is relatively pure water, it tends to leach soluble minerals, that is, these minerals are slowly driven down lower into the subsoil. That's why we don't have excess sodium chloride in our soil, here in Wisconsin. The land was once a seabed, and when the sea receded, the muck must have been full of salt, but its mostly gone. If you drill down deep enough, there is still saltwater to be found.

If you took standard pine bark mulch and ran it through a shredder several more times you'd essentially have the same thing as the soil conditioner they sell in the bags at Home Depot and Lowe's. You can use either as a mulch, but only the ultra-shredded pine bark "fines" make a good soil conditioner. I swear by it, and was taught to use it in master gardening class, as the class "mentor" said that's all he uses for soil conditioner AND for mulch... If you use the regular single-ground or double-ground mulch, it will eventually decompose and incorporate into your soil, thus enriching it and improving its condition... If you don't mind spending a little more money and using the "soil conditioner" as mulch in areas that maybe really need soil conditioning done, but you have existing plants and don't want to disturb their roots, you can do like the MG "mentor" does, and like I now do with some of my younger trees and shrubs where I maybe didn't amend as much as I'd have liked and I also don't have to use so much that it's a financial burden, and use the soil conditioner as a mulch for your plants... Since it's a bit denser, you won't need or want to go quite as thick with it (so you don't keep oxygen from the roots), and since it's already so finely ground, much of it will decompose and be incorporated into the soil by rain and earthworms each year, and you'll need to add more the following year. The advantage, however, is that after a few years of doing that, and PROPERLY fertilizing (sometimes I just mix in some of the high-yield composted cow manure with the pine bark fines... the 0.5-0.5-0.5 stuff, or I use something like Miracle-Gro), you'll have some incredibly fertile, rich soil around the roots of whatever's growing there and it should be doing good. You could even top-dress your entire lawn (not that I'm encouraging lawns) with a small amount of fines (say an inch or slightly less), then go over that with an aerator to simultaneously aerate the soil and mix the fines in somewhat and water the lawn, and likely also slowly improve a heavy clay lawn that way. This truly IS "nature's way." In fact, the brand you USED TO see at both Home Depot and Lowe's was called "Nature's Helper,", but it suddenly disappeared about the time I started buying a bunch of it... My understanding is that the Scott's company (owner of Miracle-Gro, Ortho, and A LOT of other lawn and garden products, pressured both companies retail chains to quit carrying that brand, or something to that effect, but who knows? You can also buy pine bark fines by the scoop some places, which I've done ONCE, but aside from the fact that you need a trailer or a pickup bed for them to dump them into, there's two other facts that dissuade me from doing that again (I've done it once)... 1. Unlike some other products, the savings didn't add up to that much... maybe the equivalent of getting 3 more bags of the stuff I'd buy at HD or Lowe's for the money. 2. But most importantly, the QUALITY of the fines wasn't nearly as good as what I get in the bags at HD and Lowe's... Sitting out in a big pile, it had already degraded a good bit, so much of the fines had "gone to powder," and it was all VERY DRY. The bagged fines are always moist when they come out of the bag, and of a fairly uniform size, both of which I believe are important to proper soil conditioning. The bags of fines are usually 2 cubic feet for about $2.50; The high-yield cow manure is generally $1.19 per bag for 1-cubic-foot bags, and the cheap topsoil is generally $.98 for a 1-cubic foot bag... Depending on how fertile I think the soil already is, I generally mix 1 bag of the cheap, high-yield cow manure to 1 or 2 bags of soil conditioner, and then maybe top that with enough of the cheap topsoil to make an even layer... sometimes I'll mix that in, too. (You can ALSO pay $4 for a bag of .5-.5-.5 "Black Cow" or "Mushroom Compost," but I've found NO benefit except that both HD and Lowe's keep those in stock better... the Earthgro [I think that's the brand] composted manure that's also .5-.5-.5 has the same analysis and looks and feels the same, so I go with that -- One caveat on any "composted manure": I ALWAYS poke a small hole in one bag and take a sniff; if it smells RANK... sulferous, or like a sewer, DON'T buy it -- Wal-Mart had some smelling like that outside, reduced for quick sale at the end of last season... was AWFUL smelling... it's either not DONE composting, or got contaminated.) Happy Conditionings! Jeff

Were I in your shoes I would contact Agriculture-Victoria for more information about your soil, as well as look more closely at what I had. Soil pH is important since it does determine the availability of nutrients, so a good reliable soil test is needed. If the soils in your area are normally alkaline and yours tested acidic there is something wrong with the test. How much organic matter is in the soil? How well does the soil drain? What does the soil smell like? What kind of life is in the soil? In addition to a good reliable soil test for soil pH and nutrient levels perhaps these simple soil tests may be of some help. 1) Soil test for organic material. From that soil sample put enough of the rest to make a 4 inch level in a clear 1 quart jar, with a tight fitting lid. Fill that jar with water and replace the lid, tightly. Shake the jar vigorously and then let it stand for 24 hours. Your soil will settle out according to soil particle size and weight. For example, a good loam will have about 1-3/4 inch (about 45%) of sand on the bottom. about 1 inch (about 25%) of silt next, about 1 inch (25%) of clay above that, and about 1/4 inch (about 5%) of organic matter on the top. 2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains’ too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up. 3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart. 4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell, to a point. Too much organic matter can be bad as well. 5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy. kimmq is kimmsr