Bad Water?

[Worth1]

I have had a devil of a time keeping my PH 7 or below in my two raised beds for some time now.
I wasn't for sure where the problem was and suspected the soil I bought was high.
Then about two years ago I had a volunteer tomato plant come up in the soil pile I had at the end of my drive.
It flourished like no other plant I had.
This was the same soil I had put in the garden.
What the heck is going on I told myself.
Then the other day I used the pressure canner.
I ran this thing with about a gallon of water in it, 'maybe more' to do a function test.
When I opened the lid there was about 1/16th of an inch of calcium deposit all around the inside.
I had a kidney stone problem a few years ago at just around 2 years after I moved here.
I went to running an RO system to get my drinking water from.
The stone problem went away.

The growing problem started at about the same time I had to start running the city water on it.

About once a week (and I could do more) I have to put vinegar on the garden at about 8 oz the gallon to keep the PH down below 7.

Now here are my methods for doing the PH test and my observations.

Now before someone wantst to get on here and say they are junk I know they can be.
What my late wife did a few years ago is buy me a cheap soil tester.
I figured out hoe to use the thing and started experamenting with it.
I would get soil and test.
Then I would add wood ash and test again.
I would add vinegar and test yest again.
Every time I did this I would get different results and they would be what I would expect.
Then I got the PH test kit because the garden had just stalled out completely.
The color showed me it was like 8.5.
I got the PH meter and used it.
It read about the same thing.
I had a tom of fertilizer (16-16-16 on the garden so I know that wasn't the problem.
So I hosed the garden down with the vinegar and in about a day or two the plants jumped out of their skin.

So back to the meter.
I dont care what the ph realy is as fare as dead on accuracy is I can tell if I am in the ball park by the way the plants show growth.
So far according to my observations any time the meter goes above 7 the growth slows down.
When the meter goes below 7 and to around 6 or 6.5 the growth starts back up again.
I also note the temperature to make sure that isn't the problem and take it into account.

Yesterday I did a test and it was fine.
Last night I soaked the soil down with the water hose and today the PH was back up to just above 7.
I mixed about 1/2 cup of vinegar to about a half gallon of water poured a little on and tested in the same spot again.
The ph read around 5.

The Pepper patch that I mixed the 50%50 soil to peat ratio in is doing much better than the one I didn't keeping the PH level right.

Take it for what you want even if the meter isn't dead on it has helped me greatly in keeping my plants going strong.

Worth