The 40 dollar pH meter lied for 6 weeks, my whole garden suffered

I got a cheap pH meter off Amazon and trusted it blindly. Turns out it was reading 2 points too low, so I was dumping lime on soil that was already alkaline. My tomatoes in the back plot went yellow and stopped growing, 12 plants total. Soil test kit from the county extension office showed the truth in 10 minutes. Anyone else had a gadget sabotage their setup before realizing the old school method works better?

2 comments

2 Comments

tylerlane29d ago

Read somewhere that those cheap pH meters drift like crazy because the probe gets dirty or the cheap internals just lose calibration, especially if you leave them sitting around. Same thing happened to a buddy of mine with a moisture meter, it told him his plants were dry so he kept watering and ended up drowning his peppers. The county extension test is the way to go though, those folks know their dirt and it costs like nothing compared to the headache of losing a whole season. I learned my lesson with a $15 EC meter that was way off, now I just grab a soil test kit from the local farm supply and send it off once a year. Sucks you lost the tomatoes but at least now you know the cheap stuff is basically a toy for guessing, not a tool for growing.

the_miles29d agoMost Upvoted

Man, that hits home! I had the same thing happen with a cheap pH pen, but switching to the testing strips from the hardware store saved my whole herb bed last summer.