Hi all, not been on for a while, but glad to have come out of hibernation.
There is a skip at our local council tip with a sign saying free compost, that is full of a rich, dark crumbly compost. so armed with rubble buckets I made a big dent in it. One thing I noticed though is that it has a burnt smell to it and it is very dark, so I brought some in to work and checked the pH in the lab by mixing some with distilled water and it came out as pH 9.0 !!!!!
I think this compost comes from the recycle bins that we leave outside our houses twice a month and I suspect that the stuff that cant be composted, i.e, trees etc, is probably burnt and then mixed back in, so this compost probably has a high ash content and certainly a high pH.
Is this suitable to use for brassicas? This is the first time I've really considered pH, but 9.0 seems very high to me.
It is not something I have a problem with so all I can do is direct you to the RHS 's take on the subjecthttps://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=82 (https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=82)
BC is a mayore highbush blueberry area.I am surrounded by blueberry farms, and I grow them myself too. The natural answer is peat, the normal soil is either removed from the planting hole and replaced with peat or heavily amended with it. .XX Jeannine