Pine Needles as a buffering agent

[Dan Ponton]

I have always added pine needles to the soil as a way to make the soil more acid. Has anyone used pine needles as a way to lower their FT PH?

[Steve Bradbury]

Trav Hughey, the Barrelponics guy  posted a couple of times on the yahoo barrelponics group about using them. I tried using them to drop the PH and got minimal results...probably due to the fact the water didnt get to leech the acidity out of the needles....it was a constant flow system.

You may want to use them in a cotton pillow case, or burlap sack, hung in a barrel like a big tea bag, and have the barrel flood/drain..into the grow bed ..just a thought-

Steve

[TCLynx]

There has been much talk of using things like logs, pine needles, oak leaves, even peat etc to lower pH.

Please remember that it would NOT be a buffer, buffers raise the pH while things like this acidify or lower the pH.

Anyway, there has been much discussion of using these things to lower pH.  Keep in mind that they are very slow acting and they are likely to tint the water while they do it.  If your source water is very hard or high pH with lots of buffering or calcium carbonate in it, these natural solutions for lowering the pH or making blackwater may not be equal to keeping up with the top up water's buffering.  It will depend on how hard your water is if these natural water softeners will be effective enough for you.

I like to collect as much rain water as possible so I can balance my system water pH by choosing to top up with rain water or well water depending on what the pH is doing.  Rain water tends to be acidic or at least not have any buffering depending on what it was collected off of and stored in.  My well water is just a step down from liquid limestone (full of calcium carbonate.)