If your problem is alkaline soil, add soil sulfur liberally and rake it into the top inch or so.

Compost will fix your clay. A ton of it tilled in well, then more each year, tapering off the amounts and the amount of digging to allow spongy structure to develop. Compost also moderates pH. Search for 'clay soil' on this forum and you'll find a lot more details on how to improve clay.

I agree, terrible waste of good booze. And the alcohol does not evaporate that fast, probably still a lot in there after a few hours. It likes water which is the other 60% of the volume.

Oh, and if you want to know about your water, contact the water utility, they should have a report showing pH, hardness, alkalinity, all that.

Just an FYI - soil pH is overrated. Most issues identified as such are actually related to specific chemical deficiencies. Bringing the soil back in balance also changes the soil pH. But just altering the soil pH directly leaves out the required nutrients, and often either fails to solve the problem or introduces another one.

I would suggest a soil analysis (costs about $25) then address the specific issues uncovered there.

Soil in many parts of California is alkaline due to lack of rainfall. Soil pH is of great importance because it affects the ability of plants to utilize the nutrients they need to grow strong and healthy.

kimmq is kimmsr

I am reading the tonic book and I agree some of the advice is wrong. I would say the book bats at about 50/50 in terms of what I would agree with. I am not sure about the safety of bleach. He suggests bleach to remove lichens from trees mixed with water and some other ingredients. Ukiah is so wet that many trees I see are so covered with lichens that they must be dying. All the bark is covered and I mean 100 of all the bark is covered and this can't be good for the tree.

If he is advocating killing lichens that is proof positive he has no idea what he is talking about. Lichens pose no threat to trees. They indicate clean air and a thriving ecosystem.

And they have little, if anything, to do with rainfall amounts. Lichen is a perfectly natural occurrence and can appear even in very dry climates as well. FWIW, lichen has never killed a tree although they can colonize a tree that is suffering from other stressors, as well as those that are perfectly healthy.

IIRC, Lichens are actually a symbiosis between a fungus and a moss or algae, and are not actually attacking whatever they are growing on. They grow on rocks too.

Toxcrusadr ... and you know those rocks have been dead for a long time. Must have been the lichens that killed them.

After the Whiskey sits out all night I think the alcohol evaporates.

You could easily test this hypothesis by drinking it the next morning before you leave for work.

I have some aggressive algae that grows on my camilia and my rhododendron. I think it blocks the leaves from making light. Its because they are in the shade in San Francisco. I used physan 20, and it made a huge improvement right away. I only then used it like once a year after that and it still improved. But, I don't have any trees with lichens so no way to test that out. I think bleach is very harsh, but I also heard it will break down to inert matter. I would say to use Dr. Bonners soap instead of dish soap or baby shampoo. Most baby shampoos like Johnson and Johnson have a toxic smelling fragrance. There was a product I liked they used to sell at Half Moon Nursery that was a soap for plants with citrus oils and some other things. But, I can't find that product anymore. I used to use it wash off the algae before I found physan 20, but it always grew back right away.

Are you sure what is affecting the camellia and rhododendrons is algae and not something like sooty mold? It would have to be a very dense infestation of algae to cause problems and one tends not to even see that up here in the damp and shady PNW woods :-) But various sucking insects can produce the excretions sooty mold prefers to grow on and sooty mold development on the type of BLE's you describe is dead common. And you see it on citrus as well in warmer parts of CA.

But the tonics and potions recommended by Jerry Baker are unlikely to be much help - first, sooty mold is caused by an insect infestation so you will need an insecticide to control it, not a fungicide (Physan 20). And it washes off easily with just water, so no need to be spraying products of dubious effectiveness all over everywhere.

Baby shampoo has toxic smelling fragrance? Does that mean the fragrances are toxic, or the shampoo somehow smells 'toxic'? Just morbidly curious, you understand.

There is an insecticidal soap that's sold for use on aphids and other soft bodied critters. It's a true soap, usually potassium salts of fatty acids derived from coconut or palm oil. Very low plant toxicity and virtually none to humans.

For some of us the scents used in detergents, including "baby shampoos", can cause an allergic reaction. While those scents may not be toxic they do cause severe problems to those allergic. To someone having an allergic reaction the product may as well be toxic.

kimmq is kimmsr

Yes, that is it exactly, I have asthma and allergies and breathing in fragrances from things like cheap perfume make me use my inhaler and people can die from asthma. Although the doctors say that its is over use of the inhaler that caused the deaths. At any rate, I find most baby products like baby oil to have chemical fragrances that people like to think of as smelling like baby powder and I don't know why anyone would use that on a baby. Babies can smell and they can't say, Mommy I hate that smell. Dr. Bonner's Baby mild has no fragrances. I read the label and if I see fragrance listed in the ingredient I don't buy that product. Some unscented products even contain something called "masking fragrance", which is too cover up other smells in the product.

EDIT: I crossposted with Laurel. I will add to my post below that I totally understand the allergy and asthma issue and my comments about toxicity (or lack thereof) are not about that.]

Agreed kimmq. I am no fan of fragrances myself, although I'm not allergic. I just have a hard time believing baby shampoo fragrance is toxic. The overuse of cleaning products which puts traces of biodegradation-resistant detergents into the waterways is a much bigger problem. I use a lot less of any cleaning product than 'recommended' by the people selling it. But I suppose that's a different thread. :-]

Jerry Baker
needed a fact checking. On page 94 of the Tips and Tonics Book:

Q. Can I use
maple leaves to mulch my rhododendrons?

A. Yes, they
make a great mulch because they are very alkaline.

I know he
must have meant acid. Rhododendrons only like acid soil. I don’t use leaves to
mulch away because they would blow away, at least in San Francisco on the
western exposure garden. I use homemade compost and then if I want more
mulching I would use something like Black Forest Sheared wood on top of that to
keep the compost from getting washed away. But, I usually did not even bother
to mulch with soil as good as I had going there with my coffee ground
composting. I would use Starbucks
grounds to make the compost, but never used straight grounds. But, using a mulch of leaves I think that
would foster fungal diseases. I always
pick up the leaves right away, if you leave them on the ground
that is supposed to cause fungal in the leaves to fester, and I need them for my compost.

This book
has been really fun to read but some of it is just weird, like run your
sprinklers for four hours a day on page 97. In fact, it was for AT LEAST four
hours a day, not just four hours a day maximum, but not to do it very often.
Four hours a day would create thousands of dollars in a water bill and not only
that most all of the water would just drain away. It would be insane, your neighbors
would turn you into the water police. They are the people in California who enforce drought regulation. There even have an app here so people can go around
and take photos of others wasting water and upload them to the app and click a
button called report. I guess it works like that I never tried it.

Consider
what he said about deep watering vs. light watering. I think light watering is
not so bad. It can create root system that are close to the surface right? But
if you plan to be there and water it often does it matter that much?

On page 96, “he says water deeply because if
there is a prolonged drought the plants will be healthier with a deep root system.”

There is
always a prolonged drought, but if you water lightly instead of deep there won’t
be. In sandy soil with compost, deep watering just runs down in the soil and is
not saved for the plants. If you don’t have compost the water will actually not
sink into the soil at all. I have to water just a little bit and wait for that
to sink and then water just a little bit more and repeat again and again. It
just runs off of sandy hard packed soil. He should of divided the book up into
watering for sandy soils vs. clay soils. I don’t know about the clay soils, I
am just getting started with those.

I'm afraid he's actually right about deep watering. It is far better than light watering.

I just noticed the sooty mold comment for some reason right now. I don't think its sooty mold as its green and not black. It only grows on the lower leaves that are more in the shade. Its possible due to bad placement and lack of sun light, but there is no better place to put them and they are now too old to be dug up and moved to Ukiah, which would probably take care of the issue completely. I did post about on garden web years ago in the Rhododendron forum and that is where I got the idea about Physan 20. Just once a year treatment keep it away, that stuff is really amazing. I don't know what in it, but it says it help with viruses, bacteria and algae growth. I only use it for algae, as I don't think I have any bacteria and as for viruses, it can't really help those at all. You can also use to clean garden stones, bricks and walls with a lot of moss on them and it won't hurt your garden plants (like bleach probably would hurt them.)

About deep watering, everyone repeats this, but is it really the case? I want to look at the evidence. The top layer of my soil is where the most healthy compost exists, therefore if the plants keep their roots near the surface they will be basking in the compost. Deeper levels contain poorer soils. There is a soil profile with each level mapped out.

Under ideal circumstances without no drought I would say water deeply. I mean why not water deeply if water is free. Water bills are huge in California. Certainly deep watering does not harm the plants, but does not do them enough good to justify the expense? If we have a heavy rain that does create a deep watering and deep water is good for soils. But, I am thinking let the rain do it instead of me trying to do it myself.