Garden Soil Test Interpretation

@oscar We’re almost there with boron. My goal is to give it another tweak from the current 0.53 to 0.7 ppm. Copper currently sits at 1.13 ppm. I would like to bring it to 2 ppm. This might have to be done over the next 2 years in small increments.

I need to boost cobalt, moly, silicon, manganese and tweak the sulfur up a tiny bit, then I’ll be sitting on great soil. I figured it would take me a few more years to get there. But I must say that all my vegetables responded very well to last year’s soil. I had an amazing yield of super healthy looking produce. I don’t use pesticides in my vegetable garden.

I would not amend anything besides adding Organic material.
If veggie garden addind straw, if orchard addind wood chips.
Its trynd to amend that people ruin the soils.

Maybe im too much of a naruralist for some people but if nature its not working with you, then its not working.

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Right, you have great soil as is. Why do you need more micros? Once you have too much of some of these there’s no taking it back.

That’s not a bad plan. But he has 7% OM. Why more?

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@fruitnut What can I say? I’m a perfectionist. LOL
I will always strive to have all soil components at slightly above optimal levels respective to what I’m growing. It makes a difference in the quality and flavor of the produce.

You are trying to do it right. As in taking soil samples as a guide. Whoever mucked up my soil with excess MN probably just dumped a boatload of something with a more is better approach.

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A lot of people just buy fertilizer or micronutrients blindly and dump it in every year. My brother’s soil is crazy saturated with toxic levels of everything. He just keeps dumping fertilizer and all sorts of stuff every year. Then he complains that he doesn’t get fruit and only gets large plants. I gave him the exact same plants I grow. When I asked him to submit a soil sample last year, the results showed as if he sent a sample of fertilizer to the Extension! Insane numbers. His N levels were absolutely off the hook.

I try to take a very scientific approach to gardening and leave the guess work out the door. I do that for most things in my life.

Because there is no limit on OM. The more the better.

Ideal would be a good balance of straw and wood chips to have a good balance of bacteria and fungi.

If he is turning the soil as i expect people do in veggie gardens some of the carbon is being lost as gas also, so adding carbon back is always good.

Adding minerals its not a good idea because its not about the minerals, its about how much the enzimes of the microorganisms break them down and make them available, this you dont see on regular soil tests, you need a chromatogram to see that.

Its about relationship of minerals, microorganisms and organic matter, in universities they just look at minerals because thats what they can sell and make money on, so thats what they teach, the curriculums are even design by the companies that sell the products.

Its about the life in the soil not about the food in the soil.
But when you are higher than 5% OM you are quite safe, only if you make big mistakes you can destroy that.

Marco looks like a cientist testing with litle changes and thats the way to go if you want to see the changes. Im curious about what will come out of this.

At my place i use a lot korean natural farming,if you want to add something, here you have a lot of recipes but anyway…you dont need it.

Not sure I agree with this. There’s a balance to everything. Adding too much organic material interferes with an existing balanced soil. Last year I added 4 cubic yards of organic compost and did direct composting for the whole year. This year I will only do direct composting among the rows of whatever I’ll grow.

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Tell a forest that her organic matter its too much.

If you used compost that was not properly decomposed it can suck your nitrogen for example…as i mentioned before , to make changes better to make small changes, specialy when you have a very good soil like you already have,

It looks like you are trending up in pH value towards neutral 7.0 as your testing sequence confirms. You need to take measures to keep it slightly acidic by doing several things:

  1. If you are on municipal water, chances are your water supply is alkaline like mine. Over a period of years if your % water is alkaline, your soil will also become alkaline and less fertile to most plants you grow. In my area rainfall is slight acidic, but not enough to overcome the municipal alkaline doses, mainly because my rainfall occurs in winter-spring rather than when I most need it!
  2. Review your practice to achieve fertility to determine why your soil is trending up in pH. Perhaps you need to either acidify your water source or cut back on whatever is causing it to go towards alkaline.
    Dennis
    Kent, wa
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I amended this soil throughout the past several years to what is today. It’s still not perfect, but I’ve done it by making small additions, without shocking it too much. You had to see the tomato plants that I planted 4 years ago, when I first moved in. They looked like they were hit by herbicides. It was an ugly leaf curling disaster of a mess. The soil deficiencies were terrible. I was able to turn things around dramatically in a few years.

I think that is because soils with high Organic material and high microorganisms populations drive PH to neutral.

Worm castings are ph 7.

@DennisD Very good eye! Yes, as you could see from my initial report calcium was very deficient at baseline. The tomatoes were showing it via bottom end rot on a great percentage of fruit. I added a significant amount of dolomite lime, oyster shells and crushed eggshells in the past few years. The calcium is looking much better, but the pH was definitely affected as a result. This year I will only add eggshells from our home waste, but no other forms of calcium. I use well water, which I also tested and doesn’t show a significant level of calcium. It does show a significant amount of magnesium though. This justifies the high magnesium levels in the most recent report.

Lime will definitely push to alkaline, suggest no more dolomite or any form of lime. Best fertilizer for tomatoes is Epsom salts applied as foliar application.
Dennis

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@DennisD I was using MasterBlend, which has Epsom salt as one of the components, but I need to tone down usage of epsom, due to the high levels of magnesium in the most recent report. Tomatoes do love magnesium and calcium though!

I’m getting the idea your chasing numbers for the sake of chasing numbers.

I think that’s a bad idea.
imo you already overshot your PH ( i would have kept it 6.5 or lower)
And it will probably keep rising a few years. (the lime you applied works slowly over many years)

It’s really easy to add something to soil. Practically impossible to take it away.

The increase in magnesium is almost certainly due to the dolomite lime (has a roughly 2:1 ratio of calcium/magnesium)
Although your water source could have played a smal role.

Your soil test results are really good.
So unless your seeing some clear deficiency’s (which i doubt looking at the test results)
It hurts nothing to leave it alone, let it stabilize for a few years. It hurts a lot if you overshoot on adding something and than run into trouble in a few years.

the soils lab even states that the optimal bounds for copper and boron are not really optimal bounds. But just what is average/normal range.

Think of it this way, If your BMI is 21, would you work really hard to increase that to 26.5? (average in some countries, normal range) Or would you keep it as is, as long as it’s not giving any issues. Or even better would you look at what’s considered good/healthy instead of what’s average/normal range?

your 2021 test results where already really good. If those where my results i would have used a tiny amount of lime. And some organic matter and be pretty dam happy about it.
the fact that your calcium base saturation shot up from 37% to almost 70% in just 2 years worries me a bit.

Also keep in mind that for micro element the margin of error in the tests can be (i think likely are) larger than the measured value and or optimum range (which is as the lab itself states isn’t even and optimum range)
This could mean you get a false report, mess with your soil and get a different false value next year on another element and mess with that. Repeating that year after year costs your a lot of effort and money and mucks up your soil. Don’t go blindly chasing numbers! especially when those numbers don’t even have error margins mentioned. That’s almost the opposite of an scientific approach.

reading back my post. It comes off a little harsh. It’s not meant that way. Your doing a lot right! i would just like to warn you to not overcorrect or try and fix problems that aren’t actually problems. Since that might actually give you problems when you had little to none to start with.

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@oscar Hate to wholeheartedly disagree with you on the 2021 results. That was the first soil test I took at my new residence, and I highly doubt you would have been very happy if all your tomato plants looked like this:




I also performed an extremely expensive herbicide and pesticide test with Columbia Laboratories in Oregon to exclude the possibility that herbicides or something else would have caused this event. Some top agricultural consultants in MA determined the root cause to be soil nutritional deficiencies. They were obviously correct.

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@oscar Let me give you a little perspective compared to 2020. This is what my garden looked like in 2022. And the yields were off the hook, like I never experienced in almost 30 years of gardening.





PS: I didn’t grow the bananas

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For what tt’s worth I have used Logan Labs for five years. They are an excellent lab, as I’m sure many others are as well. I use them for lawns as turf grass management is an interest of mine. For those of you reading this, as well as the OP. Organic matter such as leaves or hay will bring calcium up to desired levels. Boron seems to be important helping plants in periods of drought and seed development. Copper is required for many enzymatic activities in plants and for chlorophyll and seed production. Micro nutrients improperly applied can wreak havoc and make soils a waste land. My advice to the OP is that it isn’t a speed race and your in a good place let your additives break down and see where you are in a couple of years. With your current Ph, don’t add any more calcium additives, you’ll get plenty from your organic matter as it breaks down. I sort of think we can add too much organic matter. At some point you don’t really have soil anymore and it becomes a fine dust that doesn’t really cling together like soils do. I’m having good success throwing hay and leaves on the ground, pulling the mulch aside and stick plants or seeds in the cleared away spots. However…leeks, onions and celery I don’t think you can have too much O.M. they love ‘muck’ soil.

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I don’t see what the big deal is. You do the test to get a number. Then you make application using established application rates. I repeat: Established application rates as opposed to “wild guess”.

For micronutrients, its practically like homeopathic. Like a quarter tsp. So be it.

Agonizing that last tiny application to get to “ideal”isn’t worth it. In my case a couple of things were entirely missing. So that made it easy.

Also, knowing what’s there in abundance is just about as important.

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