rikdabrick
Well-Known Member
So, @MustangStudFarm I found this page
http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1490/PSS-2225web2013.pdf
And this page
http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-6620/HLA-6036web.pdf
To be upfront, I'm just reading from those two pages. These reports don't have some of the info I consider vital, which is fine because those two pages help understand the report quite a bit. I (and many others) have a different ideology of soil mineral balancing from many (probably most to all) universities. These university programs are the basis for mainstream agriculture and are not focused on growing the healthiest plants or most nutrient dense food. It's all based on cost efficiency to crop yield and in the back drop is research funding from fertilizer companies to try to get more fertilizer sold through university crop trials. Most university ag programs go by the SLAN (Sufficient Levels of Available Nutrients) method and the reason I'm saying all this is because they don't tell you very much besides whether or not adding some kind of fertilizer will most likely give you yield increases or maybe give you yield increases or probably won't give you yield increases. What the person who filled in the comment section on your report should have written is, "You have 10 times+ the amount of some minerals and the rest are in heavy excess", not just "EXCESSIVE" with no solution to having potentially toxic soil. And none of this takes in to account how they actually might be testing your soil which is a long story. Anyway, I'm ranting, but some of this stuff is frustrating to read because it's not going to help out someone like you by just saying, "EXCESSIVE" or "SUFFICIENT" or "INSUFFICIENT". Or use blood meal as an organic alternative. How much blood meal? They didn't tell you that. They only gave you recs for 34-0-0 ammonium nitrate (it would be 8.5 lbs. of 12-0-0 blood or feather meal to equal their 3 lbs. of 34-0-0 recs, just FYI). And really it's not easy to get a good soil test report on nitrogen because it's so reactive so that recommendation doesn't mean much. Did you keep your soil sample chilled? Did they keep it chilled for the 3 weeks they had it? So unknown amounts of nitrogen could have been off-gassing that otherwise wouldn't have been if it was left undisturbed? Again I'm ranting, but it's frustrating when you dig into pretty much any field of science and realize that they're all just putting on a show for the general public for the most part and aren't looking at the whole picture and don't really want to look at the whole picture. Anyway, I'm done rambling. There's probably something in there worth reading in that little rant somewhere, but I'm not making any guarantees, ha ha.
How much soil do you have that you took this sample from? And is it a lightweight peat based soil? You can either cut it with new soil or put a bunch of gypsum in it and let the gypsum work its magic. And that would be the calcium sulfate di-hydrate gypsum preferably, not the calcium sulfate anhydrate. Calcium sulfate di-hydrate will work faster. Or you can cut some of the soil with new soil and put a bunch of gypsum in the rest and let in wash out some of the excessive minerals to use later. Gypsum acts like a reset button if you overdo it.
And I don't know how to read anything from your manure report. You can probably get some input from the lab on that one. Next time just send in your compost/manure to have it tested the same as your soil.
And just to let you know, my beginnings of studying agronomy came about for the same reason you sent in a lab test. I was recycling my soil and adding amendments and everything was going great. I was growing amazing weed and then I had an entire crop fail and everything hit a wall. I unknowingly had made my soil toxic. My plants were handling okay until that one extra straw broke the camel's back.
Below is the soil report I got back from that greenhouse that failed which is a different greenhouse than the soil report from above.This greenhouse was only 400 sq ft and I ended up dumping 320 lbs of gypsum in it to knock out the excesses. Also, here's another example of the differences in Ca and Mg between the M3 and AApH8.2 tests. And I like Spectrum Analytic for certain things, but I have a feeling the CEC isn't accurate.
Okay, I'm tired and off to bed.
http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1490/PSS-2225web2013.pdf
And this page
http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-6620/HLA-6036web.pdf
To be upfront, I'm just reading from those two pages. These reports don't have some of the info I consider vital, which is fine because those two pages help understand the report quite a bit. I (and many others) have a different ideology of soil mineral balancing from many (probably most to all) universities. These university programs are the basis for mainstream agriculture and are not focused on growing the healthiest plants or most nutrient dense food. It's all based on cost efficiency to crop yield and in the back drop is research funding from fertilizer companies to try to get more fertilizer sold through university crop trials. Most university ag programs go by the SLAN (Sufficient Levels of Available Nutrients) method and the reason I'm saying all this is because they don't tell you very much besides whether or not adding some kind of fertilizer will most likely give you yield increases or maybe give you yield increases or probably won't give you yield increases. What the person who filled in the comment section on your report should have written is, "You have 10 times+ the amount of some minerals and the rest are in heavy excess", not just "EXCESSIVE" with no solution to having potentially toxic soil. And none of this takes in to account how they actually might be testing your soil which is a long story. Anyway, I'm ranting, but some of this stuff is frustrating to read because it's not going to help out someone like you by just saying, "EXCESSIVE" or "SUFFICIENT" or "INSUFFICIENT". Or use blood meal as an organic alternative. How much blood meal? They didn't tell you that. They only gave you recs for 34-0-0 ammonium nitrate (it would be 8.5 lbs. of 12-0-0 blood or feather meal to equal their 3 lbs. of 34-0-0 recs, just FYI). And really it's not easy to get a good soil test report on nitrogen because it's so reactive so that recommendation doesn't mean much. Did you keep your soil sample chilled? Did they keep it chilled for the 3 weeks they had it? So unknown amounts of nitrogen could have been off-gassing that otherwise wouldn't have been if it was left undisturbed? Again I'm ranting, but it's frustrating when you dig into pretty much any field of science and realize that they're all just putting on a show for the general public for the most part and aren't looking at the whole picture and don't really want to look at the whole picture. Anyway, I'm done rambling. There's probably something in there worth reading in that little rant somewhere, but I'm not making any guarantees, ha ha.
How much soil do you have that you took this sample from? And is it a lightweight peat based soil? You can either cut it with new soil or put a bunch of gypsum in it and let the gypsum work its magic. And that would be the calcium sulfate di-hydrate gypsum preferably, not the calcium sulfate anhydrate. Calcium sulfate di-hydrate will work faster. Or you can cut some of the soil with new soil and put a bunch of gypsum in the rest and let in wash out some of the excessive minerals to use later. Gypsum acts like a reset button if you overdo it.
And I don't know how to read anything from your manure report. You can probably get some input from the lab on that one. Next time just send in your compost/manure to have it tested the same as your soil.
And just to let you know, my beginnings of studying agronomy came about for the same reason you sent in a lab test. I was recycling my soil and adding amendments and everything was going great. I was growing amazing weed and then I had an entire crop fail and everything hit a wall. I unknowingly had made my soil toxic. My plants were handling okay until that one extra straw broke the camel's back.
Below is the soil report I got back from that greenhouse that failed which is a different greenhouse than the soil report from above.This greenhouse was only 400 sq ft and I ended up dumping 320 lbs of gypsum in it to knock out the excesses. Also, here's another example of the differences in Ca and Mg between the M3 and AApH8.2 tests. And I like Spectrum Analytic for certain things, but I have a feeling the CEC isn't accurate.
Okay, I'm tired and off to bed.