Struggling with micronutrients

Hey everyone, so I’m doing no-till in 30 gal pots and I get the soil tested about twice a year and I’m consistently coming up short with Fe, Zn, and Mn. Anyone have ideas on how I can increase these? Right now I’m topdressing 1 cup every three weeks of equal parts of the following:

Neem
Karanja
Insect frass
Kelp meal
Alfalfa meal
Fish meal
Fish bone meal
Crustacean meal
Glacial rock dust
Basalt

I’m thinking maybe I need to up the ratio of kelp/glacial dust? Any ideas? Attached are the last 3 soil test results for reference.

Too much p raises soil pH locking out your micros.

Are your plants telling you that they need this top dressing or are you hoping they need it? I'd say a top dressing with a cup or two of good compost and 1/2 cup of that mix would be better if you're doing this hoping to stay ahead of the plants' consumption. Might have an issue with the compost having too much P so maybe just hit it with a tea at some crucial points through growth instead.

Are you giving any teas that might be throwing off the balance between fungal (fish does this, especially if brewed longer) and bacterial life already in the soil?

For immediate results I'd foliar with some kind of micronutrient mix, hitting the soil with anything won't really help at this point.

I'd try to stick with a tried and proven recipe and protocol. Too many people out there experimenting their plants/soil to death when there's plenty of routes other people have found that works.

Good luck, I know this stuff can be frustrating.

I wondered about lockout but the soil test suggests the ph is in decent range and the detected levels of the micros is what concerns me. I topdress every 3 weeks to try to stay on top of feeding but maybe I’ll try your suggestion with just compost and 1/2 cup of the mix. I usually top dress with worm castings every couple of months to keep the bio life going so maybe I should do it more frequently. Also no, I rarely use teas anymore.

7 is too high, shoot for 6.2-6.7.

If I was starting with a clean slate, IE no problems with the soil, I'd definitely be doing more frequent compost top dressing. I'd hate to tell you to add more if the problem with your mix to begin with is the compost, although I doubt that's the issue.

Even if you CAN get by with water only for some of these mixes I know things would be better with a compost tea once a week. I think its best to build a soil that can get through most of the grow on just water, not completely, and helping the soil out with teas by reading your plants' needs.

Sometimes solving problems with soil mixes is more of a headache than the effort to really solve them is worth IMO. Not saying you should start over or cut your current mix down with some proper stuff but......

DynamiteBob said:

Hey everyone, so I’m doing no-till in 30 gal pots and I get the soil tested about twice a year and I’m consistently coming up short with Fe, Zn, and Mn. Anyone have ideas on how I can increase these? Right now I’m topdressing 1 cup every three weeks of equal parts of the following:

Neem
Karanja
Insect frass
Kelp meal
Alfalfa meal
Fish meal
Fish bone meal
Crustacean meal
Glacial rock dust
Basalt

I’m thinking maybe I need to up the ratio of kelp/glacial dust? Any ideas? Attached are the last 3 soil test results for reference.

Click to expand...

I’ve been dealing with very similar soil issues regarding micronutrients. I believe quiescent is spot on regarding the high levels of P Causing your issues along with PH being high. As you can see your calcium levels are super high, look at the PPM. This is part of the reason why your PH is high too, again my opinion. My soil has right around the same composition and I’ve had good luck cutting the mix with some extra peat and aeration to bring ph levels down. That combined with the use of The biomin micronutrient liquid product, I believe it is biomin 153, and BioAg tm-7,has helped get things on track. I’ve used the biomin and tm-7 in waterings every couple weeks or so plus the occasional foliar spray(thanks to mustangfarmer).


I’ve also used the product ironite for quick iron fix, which for me, has been the biggest factor in terms of Micros. You can get ironite at your local hardware store.

Also regarding the dry amendments you’re adding every week, a lot of them appear to be redundant and to me at least, seem unnecessary. But I don’t to no till really, after each cycle I dump all my soil into the bin and reammend according to soil test. Good luck man

DynamiteBob said:

Hey everyone, so I’m doing no-till in 30 gal pots and I get the soil tested about twice a year and I’m consistently coming up short with Fe, Zn, and Mn. Anyone have ideas on how I can increase these? Right now I’m topdressing 1 cup every three weeks of equal parts of the following:

Neem
Karanja
Insect frass
Kelp meal
Alfalfa meal
Fish meal
Fish bone meal
Crustacean meal
Glacial rock dust
Basalt

I’m thinking maybe I need to up the ratio of kelp/glacial dust? Any ideas? Attached are the last 3 soil test results for reference.

Click to expand...

Ugh, I can't see the #'s below the graph. We can tell that things are high, but we don't know how high they are. Oh, I see. You have to open the pic in another window... Man, your phosphorus numbers look pretty good really. I've been following Dr. Steve Solomon(book:intelligent gardener) and he talks about soil remineralization. Anyways, he was on Tad Hussey's podcast on Kis Organics and they were talking about how rock dust and kelp don't have enough Zn or Mn to make a difference. So, you could just not have enough input to begin with. So, Dr. Solomon suggested to use Mn and Zn sulfate but you have to chelate it first. Dr. Solomon designed the product BioMin Booster 153 that @Growitpondfarm is talking about. The other product is from BioAg's Dr. Faust and they make TM-7 and Big-6. They are the same product, except that Big 6 was designed for Build-a-soil's Jeremy Silva(Clackamas Coots recipe). The problem that I ran into with Big-6 was that Na levels became very high and I'm in the process of leaching my soil to get rid of it. Also, you don't want your Ph to go above 6.5 if you are having micronutrient problems, the lower the better. I'm at 5.8 with mine w/o lockout issues, but excess salt. It seems like you cannot add one input without affecting other #'s, I feel like a dog chasing his tail sometimes.
Your sulfur #'s are astronomical, but that don't matter, it only lowers the Ph and it will wash away with Ca if you leach/flush your soil with 6-12'' of water. Flushing will lower your N, K, Na, and S mostly. I've been flushing and adding alfalfa meal back in as a tea, or just straight, don't matter.
Potassium needs to be 2x the recommended level for cannabis(words from the creator of Soil Savvy). Ca, K, Mg, and Na are your bases and they are in a ratio called Base Saturation Ratio. Raising one will lower the availability of the others. In other words, too much Ca and Mg will lower your K levels and cannabis is a K hungry plant. Using 25% coco coir will help because Kelp has too much salt from my exp. There is a brand of coco coir that don't use salt water in the manufacturing of coco coir, I think that it is CANNA brand.
Cannabis is also Mn sensitive, so a def will show even if other plants do fine in the soil. I'm having the most trouble with Mn and my research has led me to the conclusion that high organic(muck) soil will lock out Mn. They really don't tell you how or why, but if a soil has more than 10% organic matter, you will have Mn lockout. Most of our potting soil will have 40-60% organic matter.
BOTTOM LINE: KELP AND ROCK DUST DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MICRONUTRIENTS TO BE EFFICIENT!!!

DynamiteBob said:

Hey everyone, so I’m doing no-till in 30 gal pots and I get the soil tested about twice a year and I’m consistently coming up short with Fe, Zn, and Mn. Anyone have ideas on how I can increase these? Right now I’m topdressing 1 cup every three weeks of equal parts of the following:

Neem
Karanja
Insect frass
Kelp meal
Alfalfa meal
Fish meal
Fish bone meal
Crustacean meal
Glacial rock dust
Basalt

I’m thinking maybe I need to up the ratio of kelp/glacial dust? Any ideas? Attached are the last 3 soil test results for reference.

Click to expand...

I kept trying to make my own compost but the phosphorus was ALWAYS sky high and Mn was non-existent. So, I tried to look for other sources of compost and I ended up with Malibu Compost. I took a soil sample just to have an idea of what I was working with:
Thumbnail images enlarge a lot better than Full Images. I just took a pic with my camera.

This was my experiment with fermenting the compost with bokashi. Didn't exactly go as planned. It was interesting to see the difference in NH3 to NH4, it converted it over. NH3 will give you squat growth and NH4 will help more with stretch in veg. Anyways, the P is very excessive but there was no lockout issues either. The plants did just fine with it, but this isn't the end result that I wanted.


This is my latest try. I used everything in 1/3 peat, perlite, and malibu compost. Then, I added Big 6 and flushed it trying to lower Na. It's still high and Na will cause germination issues. I'm planting seeds so it is a big deal to me right now. Still, I have too much P and I'm not sure where it came from. I thought that adding the micronutrients would lock out some of the P. Maybe it just needs more time to happen?

have you tried mixing in some coconut water

Growitpondifarm said:

My soil has right around the same composition and I’ve had good luck cutting the mix with some extra peat and aeration to bring ph levels down. That combined with the use of The biomin micronutrient liquid product, I believe it is biomin 153, and BioAg tm-7,has helped get things on track.

Click to expand...

I agree with this! I started leaching my soil to get rid of excess Na after using Big 6. I saw that they use sodium molybdenate in Big-6/TM-7 and it was raising my Na levels to point of having to soil test again. I didn't understand where the Na was coming from, then I read the TM-7 package real close.

Growitpondifarm said:

I’ve used the biomin and tm-7 in waterings every couple weeks or so plus the occasional foliar spray(thanks to mustangfarmer).

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Right on man! I'm glad that I am helping someone because I don't think that I have it all figured out yet. I read all of this stuff and my wife is going to college for it now, but putting it from paper to real life is hard.
Micronutrients are immobile in plant tissue, so a foliar spray is mandatory to get the def fixed. TM-7 uses mined humic acid(leonardite) to chelate with and BioMin Booster uses Fish Hydrolysate to chelate with. 2 different ways to skin a cat here lol...

DynamiteBob said:

I wondered about lockout but the soil test suggests the ph is in decent range and the detected levels of the micros is what concerns me. I topdress every 3 weeks to try to stay on top of feeding but maybe I’ll try your suggestion with just compost and 1/2 cup of the mix. I usually top dress with worm castings every couple of months to keep the bio life going so maybe I should do it more frequently. Also no, I rarely use teas anymore.

Click to expand...

Hey! I know this is an old thread, but I am dealing with some of the same things and just transplanting into 30G SIPs using a similar soil. My test results looked almost exactly like yours and I'm curious how everything went for you. I'm seeing low Nitrogen, really high potassium, sodium, sulfur, calcium, and then low on all micros--K is super high(18 S (38 and Calcium(619). My PH was 6.7