Testing the Soil Before Planting Azaleas

Hello! My name is Jose Zuniga. I am a professional gardener and today I am representing expertvillage.com. Testing your soil for acid is very important step when planting Azaleas. As you are aware, Azaleas are acid lover plants. The site that I have selected for the Azaleas is next to a sidewalk because you know sidewalks are made with concrete. Concrete are well known to observe all the acid from the soil and also the minerals so what we need to do is get a little bit of sample of soil, put it in a zip lock bag and take it to your nearest home improvement center. They will be more than happy to test that for you because there you will be able to purchase the acid. As I discussed earlier, there are other ways of getting acid into your plants so as you know, Azaleas are a little bit on the higher end. It is always a good rule of thumb that you test your soils for acid you can also use coffee grinds as acid. We will go more in detail later about that. So what we are going to do now is be aware of this is an extra step but it is worth the time. I am also going to show you today later on what steps to take to improve your soil for any acid levels. This is what we need to do for acid level checks.