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I have seen many wonderful forest plantings and root over Rock plantings using feather rock... Rock that was described as purchased from an aquarium store. So, I bought a bunch of rock, assembled my base, and it is ready for planting with 5 Hinokis at the appropriate season.

I had a beautiful piece of rock left over, and was about to create a root over rock with an Azalea, and as Azaleas always make me conscious of ph, something made me decide to test the ph of the rock. I ground it up, tested it, and is off the test chart - base, not acid. The test tube shows a beautiful peacock blue - at least an 8.

Would this ph level have any affect on my trees? I have searched and not found a single reference anywhere regarding the ph value of the rock in such a planting.

Hi there.
I make lot of plantings with different stones and it never occured to me to check the PH.
I wouldn?t expect it to have much effect on plant, but if you find out that it has, please let me know

I would expect the same, as, what actually was measured was not the PH of the water dripping from the rock, but the PH of ground rock in water.

Thanks for the feedback. For clarification, I used distilled water for the test, and pulverized the stone to powder, in order to maximize valid results. The control test for the distilled water is 6.0.

All of this being said however, I have seen feather rock used in some of John Geanangel's YouTube videos, and as he uses Azaleas in so many of them, I am going to go ahead and plant the azalea. The Hinoki forest won't be planted for a while yet, and by then I should have an idea if it is having any adverse affects. I will be sure to post them here if there are any!

When you say maximizing valid results by crushing rock up, you are actually creating a source of bias.

The way to think about it is that the rock is intended to be used whole and so when you crush the rock you are changing the way it is being used by increasing its surface area and the rate at which alkalinity can leach from the rock.
So although the rock may be basic, when the rock is whole the rate at which the alkalinity can escape is negligible and should not increase pH to much for your Azalea.
A similar situation would be the rate at which solid granular fertilizer dissolves compared to liquid miracle-gro.

Isaac.

Which explains why I received far better grades in English, than I did in the sciences!