pHTolerance
Common Edibles and pH Tolerance
People like to say that trees need acid soil and vegetables prefer alkaline soil. The truth is a bit more nuanced and much more forgiving. A bit of data analysis is helpful to visualize this. The original data came this Old Farmer's Almanac article from August 13, 2019 by Catherine Boeckmann. The data below has been culled of some inedible varieties to shorten the list. The culled list can be found on the left, with green "x"s marking lowest tolerance and blue "x"s marking highest tolerance for each plant. Please contact me with any comments or corrections.
- Karl
pH Tolerance by Plant
The above stacked chart shows plants grouped by sample with their range of pH tolerance. It shows that most plants are happiest in slightly acid to neutral soil, and that nearly all will do fine in slightly acid soil.
This heat-map above shows the list by category, graphically showing that nearly 100% of the plants in this set are happy growing in slightly acid soil between 6 and 7 pH. Over 50% of every category will still be happy in alkaline soil of 7.5 pH, and many can easily tolerate an acid pH of 5.5.
Culled data shown above