Plant soil preferences

Hi all

I've been pondering something. The text books always tell us that certain plants need certain soil types, yet we all know examples of cases that completely contradict what is written. I have a Blueberry bush that produces a fair amount of fruit for its size (its only a few years old and not very big yet), but it has never been pruned, and lives in pH neautral compost, despite RHS saying it needs very acidic soil. Others here in various threads have mentioned other cases of plants defying the text books.

So if it is commonplace for plants to ignore the rules, then where did the rules come from? And what is their relevance?

On the other side of the coin I've also heard of plenty of cases of plants failing, despite the text books saying they are indestructable. One example being when a friend of mine managed to let a patch of mint die, despite all the books saying mint is very invasive.

What do we think?

 

I think that plants that need Acidic soil have problems getting specific nutrients from Alkaline soil. I know you can get "sequestered Iron" feeds to counter this, but I don't know if Iron is the only issue.

So I wonder if it is possible that in some soils the nutrients that the plant needs are available by some other means (perhaps there is lots of humus, or just a very high concentration of the nutrients occurring naturally) that the plant is happy.

 

Plant's don't read the text books!

The books will tell you how to grow plants as well as you can, and give you the optimum conditions that they should need. Some plants might do adaquately in less than optimum conditions, others are very particular, some will suffer from a particular reason which may not be obvious, others will seemingly happy despite having the 'wrong' conditions .

One of the ways of being a good gardener is to be able to grow plants in their optimum conditions, but knowing how and when to bend the rules.... and get away with it!

 

Tell him/her, they are not alone. Every year for about 10 years my Father would happily dig up huge clumps of his mint for me and every year it would die. We moved house, I got more mint, it too died!

Finally, this year, I picked up a sad little plant from 'casualty corner' in a garden centre. It had two shoots (one of which was broken), barely half a pot of soil and was bone dry, in fact it was so bad that even they said it was worthless and gave it to me! I got it home, replanted it in a container and waited for the inevitable but - since then I've had to repot it twice and it now lives in what was once the bottom of a water butt (which had split) and it's rapidly filling that too. Dad, were he still alive, would be so proud!!!

The downside is, the family now say 'has this got mint in it?' and the lamb is costing me a small fortune

 

If you have an abundance of mint, then if we ever get a summer again you can always make Moroccan mint tea. Half fill a tea pot with freshly cut mint, put about 4 heaped teaspoons of green tea in, and tonnes of sugar. Fill up with boiling water and let it mash until it is luke warm. It is super refreshing on a hot day.

 

That sounds lovely, thank you - and it will make a change from every other drink having a mint sprig in it, mint ice cream, 'anything' and mint salad not to mention the bunches of the stuff hanging about drying and that already in the freezer!