Last year, I decided to repot my Satsuki azaleas into kanuma soil. Everyone kept raving about how perfect it was for azaleas due to its acidic properties, but I ran into an unexpected issue. After I repotted, I checked the pH with my trusty digital meter and found it was sitting at around 5.0. Now, I know azaleas love acidic soil, but that seemed a little too low even for them. My azaleas didn’t seem too happy — leaves started yellowing and dropping more than they ever did before. I started to wonder if I should mix in something to raise the pH just a notch, like a bit of pumice or akadama.

I couldn't let the poor things suffer, so I started experimenting. I added some pumice to the mix, around 30%, hoping this would buffer the pH just a bit without going too far. It seems to have done the trick. Within a few weeks, the yellowing stopped, and I even spotted some new buds forming. I think the lesson I took from this is that while kanuma is excellent, it might sometimes need a bit of tweaking depending on the specific conditions your trees are in. I find myself wondering if this is something others have experienced too or if my batch was just super acidic to begin with...