Measuring Bonsai Soil pH

bottasegreta wrote:Leo, I was hoping to pick your brain a little more since you seem to be familiar with this subject.  You seem to suggest that pH of the soil isn't worth testing, because the roots titrate the pH naturally at their surface to facilitate nutrient absorption.  I'm just trying to wrap my head all the way around that, because it makes perfect sense: of course all organisms have mechanisms to buffer their environment to maintain physiologic conditions.  So WHY then do horticulturalists make such a to-do about soil pH in a traditional garden environment?  

sorry I did not get back to you, I've been busy lately, just bought a few acres, some of it wooded. Next spring will be the yamadori hunt.

You are reading my comments correctly, I do think testing soil ph and or total alkalinity is a waste of time. This is my attitude when using conventional readily available commercial media. For most trees, I use media components that are listed in one article or another as having relatively neutral or mildly acidic ph and low to moderate CEC. Akadama, pumice, pine bark, perlite, crushed granite, lava, and many other media, all have been tested in labs and data has bee published in one article or another. No need to re-do work already done by others, testing with questionable equipment can cause you to be endlessly adjusting a ph that really was acceptable.  

For the majority of trees, any of these components will work. For my azaleas, I choose components listed as having lower ph and low CEC. I use kanuma, perlite and pumice as a blend. works well for me.

If your water is good, say less than 500 ppm total dissolved solids (tds), the plants will have no trouble buffering the media to an ideal range. If you have to use water with very high tds, then you do need to worry about ph. So my viewpoint is due in part to the fact I have fairly high quality tap water available. I would say 80% of bonsai growers do not need to worry at all about this issue. But even if you have bad water, I would do my work and adapt my mix working from the municipal water supply water quality report that most municipalities publish once a year, rather than me trying to test myself.

Plants can do fine across a fairly wide ranger, only a few, like Azalea and blueberries get touchy about media. Wit them I found I just need to avoid Turface and DE, and they do fine.