Details,details. Next you will say watching late nite Jimmy Swaggart re-runs doesn't excuse me from taking mom and the kids to worship.

If only knowing the soil's ph can be as easy as that.

Sounds like the committee of blind people trying to describe the elephant!

read...Steve Soloman's "The Intelligent Gardener"

Much like many education/activist groups on Facebook...it seems "www.facebook.com/Ilikegardening"; is run by someone who has little-to-no idea what they're doing and just tosses up any old thing they find on the internet that "sounds cool" to them for content.

They've got some really ill-advised and ineffective stuff mixed in with the good stuff.

The "homesteading survivalist" movement is creating a bunch of people who want to be good at 100 different things and too many end up being really bad-to-mediocre at 100 different things. They should probably concentrate on being good at 1-2 things then moving on to something else rather than trying to master everything at once so they can tell a good suggestion from a bad suggestion.

This post was edited by nc-crn on Wed, Dec 11, 13 at 15:10

Thank you all for your support! Nancy

To determine soil pH is a more involved soil chemistry science.
It is not that soil is either ACIDIC or alkaline. There are many degrees/shades of those two.

About the wood ash: Again, without knowing the pH of the soil that you are going to add ash to it, and without knowing tha amount of ash, it is hard to make a judgement. In my GA clay acid garden soil, I kept dumping wood ash for 3 years and my soil pH was still under 6.4. And I burned close to 3 cords of fire wood every year.

All true, and you're preachin' to the choir, brother!