Do strawberries like acidic soil? Yes, strawberries like acidic soils, and there are many ways to increase your garden soil acidity for your strawberries to bloom well.
There are quite a lot of plants that tend to grow better on acidic soils. For such plants, when you cultivate them on soils with normal pH, they'd not bloom well; some of them may even die off in certain seasons.
Acidic soils are good for growing most garden flowers and strawberries are among the list.
It may interest you to know that the modern-day strawberries are a man-made hybrid gotten from wild species.
However, they are nutritious and still be regarded as "natural" fruits. Here's what you need to know about strawberries and the type of soil they like.
Table of Contents
What Are Acid Loving Plants?
When you see or hear people discuss acid-loving plants, they simply refer to plants that prefer acidic soils. This means to say that acid-loving plants need to be cultivated on soils with high pH and organic matter.
Many acid-loving plants are cultivated in various gardens; they include azaleas, blueberries, rhododendrons, strawberries, roses, and heathers. To see these plants yield best, you need to cultivate them on soils with at least 5.5 pH.
Apparently, there are plants that do not need acidic soils; such plants thrive in gardens with 4.0 pH or even lower.
Interestingly, you can increase your garden soil acidity or reduce it to suit the type of plant(s) you want to cultivate.
Do Strawberries Like Acidic Soil?
Before growing strawberries, it is always advisable to prepare the soil where you wish to plant them.
This initial process is important because strawberries can only grow well where the soil pH is between 5.8 - 6.5. Yes, strawberries thrive on acidic soils; so, it is safe to safe that they love acidic soil.
There are a couple of ways to test soil pH and know if you need to increase it or reduce it for your plant to grow well.
You can purchase a home test kit for testing soil pH, and carry out the task yourself. When you check and your garden soil pH is below 5.5, you'd need to increase it before planting strawberries.
How To Increase Soil Acidity (pH) For Strawberry Plants
One of the best ways to increase soil acidity is by adding coffee grounds to the soil. Coffee grounds are available in most garden stores.
More so, if you love brewing coffee at home, you would have enough coffee grounds to use in increasing your garden soil pH.
It is confirmed that coffee grounds contain various nutrients and tend to increase soil pH up to 7.0, which makes them an ideal somewhat fertilizer for gardeners that grow acid-loving plants in their gardens.
Furthermore, coffee grounds contain essential nutrients such as nitrogen, iron, potassium, magnesium, and phosphate.
These nutrients are essential to most plants; thus, asides from increasing soil acidity (pH), coffee grounds also improve soil fertility by depositing the nutrients to carries
To apply coffee grounds to your garden, you can make coffee grounds tea and pour it out on your garden; the nutrients in the soaked ground would get into the soil to deliver the expected result.
Another way of adding grounds to your farm is by spreading the grounds on the soil surface, and then water them down.
Some farmers and gardens may dig holes on the soil, pour the coffee grounds into the holes, and then cover them up.
Either way you prefer to add coffee grounds to your farmland or garden soil, the end result is an increase in soil fertility and acidity, which is great for acid-loving plants, mostly flowers.
Conclusion
For acid-loving plants, you need to ensure that the soil pH is high before cultivating them in your garden.
So, for the question, "do strawberries like acidic soil?" The simple answer is YES. If the soil pH is below 5.8, your strawberries would not grow well, and may even die off earlier.
As mentioned in this article, there are other plants that like acid soil, inluding roses and Rhodos.
Coffee grounds are good for increasing soil fertility and acidity; however, you may add the grounds in moderation while keeping the soil pH in check - both fresh and used grounds would work for this purpose.
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