In the autumn we spent a little while testing the pH of soil from the farm to help us understand what’s happening down in the dirt of our horticultural areas and how we might also influence the spread (or more precisely containment) of soft rush.
Litmus paper is not as precise as some testing methods – but if you want a rough guide to check out acidity in lots of different areas then its a cheap way to cover lots of ground and does give you a fairly honest indication.
It is a bit hard to see in the picture but the wetter meadows where we have a range of soils suggests a pH between 5.3 and 6 with ditch arisings being a little less acidic around 6. In other words our soil is neutral to slightly acidic.
We’ve been digging out clumps of rushes under our horticultural beds (research done in Holland shows that in inundated areas you can spray and cut soft rushes up to 16 times in a season without killing the pernicious little blighters – though removing topsoil does work). But, wildlife enthusiasts who are anxious about our farm diversity need not worry… we have plenty we’re leaving alone!
The RSPB advises that low levels of rush cover are helpful for breeding birds as the clumps offer cover for nesting and concealing chicks – we have noticed curlew’s on the field edge so maybe some of our rush cover is helping (though foxy predates this area so he must also love it). But, heavy infestations have an adverse impact – they constrain diversity and create a monoculture with unchanging height of the sward = not good. The RSPB advice to farmers on control has some good tips (though we won’t be spraying thanks all the same!)
Anyway, the conclusion is my horticulture areas may need liming to help our less acid-favouring plants thrive (though very helpfully quite a lot of our plants should do very well in these conditions).