Question
I live on Long Island's South Shore (Woodmere) and am planning on growing tomatoes, cucumbers, and a few herbs in my garden this summer. Without going to the trouble and expense of having my soil tested, can you tell me if the soil in my part of Long Island is generally acidic? If so, should I add some lime as a routine matter?

Thank You.

Answer
All that "trouble and expense" -- What about all that other work you're about to do?

Tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, probably carrots and radishes and maybe watermelons and pumpkins and "a few herbs".... believe me, you start out with this little plan, and you get in front of the seed display and the mini-plants on the benches at Hicks and suddenly your cup runneth over, giving new meaning to the term Trouble And Expense.

And you don't want to go to the "trouble and expense" of getting your soil tested?

I'll get back to that in a minute.  But let's first look at the lay of the Long Island landscape.

Richard, people do a lot of casual liming on Long Island because (a) microbial activity in the Soil releases organic acids, tilting pH down, and (b) people here think you need alkaline conditions to grow grass.

However: (a) not all Soil is microbe-rich, and (b) grass grows best in neutral Soil.

The South Shore and the North Shore have completely different geological histories.  So I'm grateful you narrowed your location down.  There is no way to answer this question without knowing that.

You can pretty much guess just looking out the window that Long Island soils have varied profiles.  Whatever grew on top of the soil left by the last glacier died and piled up over thousands of years to produce the soil we have today.

My North Shore soil is different from your South Shore soil.  Nassau is different from Suffolk.  Montauk is different from Bayside.  Most (not all) Suffolk is a little more homogenous, because the glacier pushed sand and gravel right over the land before receding 11,000 years ago.

Nassau however is a little complicated.

Along the Southern coast, conditions similar to parts of Suffolk left land close to sea level, protected by barrier beaches and islands.  Even today, it's submerged during heavy rain.  That's why all you're look at is seagrass when you drive along the Southern shore.

It wasn't always like that. But the glacier that was here scooped up all the soil and pushed it north, leaving behind sand and gravel.  When everything was finally thawed, and plants started growing again, there was only a sandy substrate to the South and something called 'Gardeners Clay' -- a silt containing limited organic matter.  Nothing that will support plant life.  Few herbaceous plants survived, fewer trees, no nutrients, all subject to erosion.

Northwards, things were different.  The clay we love to hate was a blessing in disguise.  It guaranteed a superb Cation Exchange Capacity to grow things.  This jump-start on vegetation is why even today the pH of Soil on the North Shore tends to be lower -- more acidic -- than the pH on the South Shore.

In contrast, the South, along the Atlantic, dealt with sand and gravel.

What you need to worry about, my friend, is not the pH.  You need to worry about organic matter.  And possibly other things as well.  What, we don't know.  Not without a Soil Test.

It's what I've been telling people at AllExperts for 4 years now.

Clearly, you are not sold on this concept.  But think about it.  I'll bet if Scotts ran a Superbowl ad with the right visuals, you would think differently.  There is nothing sexy about a soil test.  That does not make it a waste of time and money.

Suppose you want to make a cake?  What do you do?  Trouble and expense, right?

First, you get out the cookbook and make a list of Ingredients.

Then you check the cupboard and the refrigerator.  Do you have eggs?  Do you have flour?  Milk?  Vanilla?  You make a list.  Trouble.

If you already have Flour, you don't need to buy any more Flour.  You cross that off the list.

Maybe you have Eggs.  You have 2 Eggs.  You need 5 Eggs.  Make sure you buy some Eggs.

You check everything on the list of ingredients to make sure you have it.  Then you take that list to the store.  Expense.  And when you get home, you preheat the oven.

You don't just go to the cookbook and open it up to the Cake Recipe.  You check the ingredients first.  You make sure you have EVERYTHING you need.

Richard, How in the world are you going to bake a cake without checking the cupboards and the refrigerator first?  How are you going to put the cake in the oven without preheating it?

What's the pH of your soil?

YOU DON'T KNOW!

What minerals are there?  How much?  Anything you don't want?

A soil test will tell you EVERYTHING -- what's in the cupboard.  What's the oven temperature.  How long was the cake in there. If you have Eggs, and Butter, and Flour... These are things you NEED to know....

Because...

You CANNOT grow ANYTHING without this information.  Not Grass. Not vegetables.  Not flowers. Richard, you MUST get a soil test.

And here's where you can do that:

ccesuffolk.org/soil-testing-laboratory-677

or

cnal.cals.cornell.edu/

Make sure you ask for the "Cornell recommendation" when submitting samples.  That will get you not only the analysis, but an explanation of all the data and what it means for you and your fruits, vegetables and herbs.

Cornell University scientists will test your soil and tell you everything you could possibly need to know to grow big, beautiful tomatoes, carrots, watermelons, "a few herbs", ...

Know what else?  And I'll make this short because this is already taking up too much of your time, as well as space on the AllExperts website, but I really want to tell you this: If you give TOO MUCH of some minerals to a plant -- any plant -- you LOCK OUT access to OTHER minerals that plant cannot live without.

I'm saying this because I know what you're thinking.  You figure, like most people, if you use an "all purpose" "balanced" fertilizer, you will be feeding your vegetables everything they need.  But Richard, it does not work that way.  That is NOT the way God planned it.

Get that soil tested.  Do this right.

Thanks for writing,

THE LONG ISLAND GARDENER