Advice required to reduce soil ph from 8.5 to 6.5 range in organic way

Farm Questions
1

Please, kindly advice on what is needed to reduce the soil ph from 8.5 to 6.5 range for horticulture plans and trees farming. I don’t want to use chemicals and wanted to do in an organic way, didn’t find any proper information online and agro consultants recommend mostly chemical way.

2

Hey Ascankar.
What’s the size of land, and what’s your time frame?

Two basic methods outside the chemical one:

  1. Using organic matter, i.e. compost, will gradually lower pH. It also improves drainage and aeration in the long run.

Obviously this takes time, but will yield more sustainable soil in the long run.

  1. Planting Alkaline tolerant plants. They will gradually lower the pH.

There’s no reason you have to only one of the methods. You can try combining slightly less chemical, with organic matter AND alkaline tolerant plants. But it all comes down to what size (does it require you to start up a compost operation to gather compost from nearby areas?) and how much time (are you farming to survive this year, or for your children’s future)

3

Hi Kye_Andersson,

Thanks for your quick response. It’s close to 12 Acres.
I am planning to develop 4 to 6 acres this year and slowly the other land.

This land also have less overburden, in some places of land I can see rocks in 2-3 feet deep. Getting very tough to plan on what to do. Before 20 years this land was used for rice and sugarcane and not used for 2 decades.

My plan was do agroforestry with mostly timber tress, Guava, jackfruit and soursop trees for this year. Let me know your advice.

I am not surviving on Farming but wanted to get started with something to see income in next 2 years and plan to do full-time farming.

Water source from well has too much salts as well so planning to do borewell to mix water in well.

Thanks,
Sankar