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It is sometimes appropriate to put a little more salt in your porridge to bring out the flavour or add a splash of spring water to your nightcap of malt whisky, it releases the bouquet and heightens the expectation!

What the dickens does that have to do with gardening I hear you say?Ìý Add a little lime to your soil and improve results the following season, just another one of those pearls of wisdom learned at Daddy’s knee!

So, it is that time of year again when we ought to test our soils by analysis. You can choose to use the services of agencies that offer such facilities or you can choose a DIY kit. I tend to do the job myself but once in a while, I send a sample off to the laboratory to have the results reported more accurately.Ìý In our case, the in Aberdeen offers a good service.

To digress for a moment, I should add that ‘The Macaulay’ as it is referred to colloquially is in the process of being integrated with the (SCRI) which among other things, has been responsible for producing a great string of new soft fruit cultivars, like the , the and the or brambles.

In my experience, vegetable gardeners have to be constantly reminded to check the lime status of their soil because, certainly in our part of the world, the pH of the soil tends to drift downwards.Ìý This , as gardeners know, is used to indicate the degree of acidity or alkalinity of a soil.Ìý Neutral being pH7, decreasing numbers indicate increasing acidity and increasing numbers rising alkalinity.Ìý Most vegetable crops do best when the range lies between pH6 and pH 7. There we have it.

(It is essential for non-mathematicians like myself to appreciate that, because the pH scale is a logarithmic scale, a change in reading by 0.1 e.g. from 6.0 to 6.1 is BIG!).

Adding lime at the appropriate rate in the coming months will act as a key to the release of essential nutrients that are locked up as the soil becomes more acidic. Many gardeners, who actively try to rotate their crops, will choose to apply the lime to that part of the plot which is destined to carry the brassica crops in the following year. Their reasoning is very sound, especially if there is any likelihood of there being in the soil. This fungal organism does not go away. It attacks the roots of brassicas and can cause complete crop failure. The application of lime does NOT control clubroot but it will slow down its development, long enough for the plants to be able to produce a decent crop. More of that anon.

The corollary to this tale, which affects people who garden on alkaline soil, is the need to use plenty organic material which, by nature, will reduce pH levels. I should add, the exception to that general statement is the wonderful material we know as ‘spent mushroom compost’ it is likely to have no effect in reducing pH.

Jim McColl presents ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland's .