So my two questions are: 1. does anyone have any resources for this? and

2. My beets and carrots don't grow fruits. Their greens grow up nicely but nothing underneath. My greens all grow nicely, but they are 'brittle', their stems break very easily. My green beans sprout up wonderfully then suddenly turn yellow and die overnight. My tomatos and peppers are the same: beautiful seedlings up to about two feet then they start wilting and withering away every time. Any clues on what's wrong with the soil on this info?

2) Drainage. Dig a hole 1 foot square and 1 foot deep and fill that with water. After that water drains away refill the hole with more water and time how long it takes that to drain away. Anything less than 2 hours and your soil drains� too quickly and needs more organic matter to slow that drainage down. Anything over 6 hours and the soil drains too slowly and needs lots of organic matter to speed it up.

3) Tilth. Take a handful of your slightly damp soil and squeeze it tightly. When the pressure is released the soil should hold together in that clump, but when poked with a finger that clump should fall apart.

4) Smell. What does your soil smell like? A pleasant, rich earthy odor? Putrid, offensive, repugnant odor? The more organic matter in your soil the more active the soil bacteria will be and the nicer your soil will smell.

5) Life. How many earthworms per shovel full were there? 5 or more indicates a pretty healthy soil. Fewer than 5, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service, indicates a soil that is not healthy.

These do not replace a soil test that tells you the soils pH and Phosphorus, Potash, Calcium, or Magnesium levels but people have gotten by without those tests when they were not available. if you can find someplace that would do them, that would be good since the problems may be nutrient related.

What might be helpful is telling whether the soil is pure sand, whether this soil has ever produced good crops, whether the area is tropical, whether the soil is highly leached of minerals by high rainfall, whether the garden site is on a former dump.

It sounds like your soil is highly deficient in minerals or highly contaminated.

too easy really, if the plants grow and look healthy then there is nothing to little wrong with the soil, to keep a natural balance we mulch heavily with spoilt hays like lucerne hay and grass hay, the easiest and cheapest for us is sugar cane mulch in roll or bales.

we then tuck our spent vege' plants and rottable scraps from kitchen under the mulch so never need to fertilise, and our worm farm worms live in the garden, all too easy really.

we do use gypsum and on occasions dolomite, like now there has been radiata pines growing so using some dolomite to help sweeten the soil.

that's it currently raking slashed grass from other properties to save buying mulch.

see our presentation:

len

len

Folks have gardened for eons without soil tests - no reason you can't as well. FWIW, adding copious quantities of organic matter - like compost, composted manures, leaf mold, etc. - can improve virtually any soil condition.

Yup good point. I know small farmers that have large organic garden plots and NEVER get soil tests. Just adding good compost each is the only thing they do.

Plants that are not well-adapted to a particular climate will fail to thrive. Plants not getting the amount of solar radiation they need will fail to thrive, plants not getting enough moisture or too much moisture will fail to thrive. The thing to do in any situation where one is ignorant of what is normal, is look around and see what others are doing. Are other gardeners in your region trying to raise the same types of crops that you are? If not, it's likely you've got the wrong crops. Is your garden as sunny as other gardens? Have you noted what other gardeners are using for fertilizer?

well put

len

tj

Try to think outside your paradigm once in a while.

Posted by pnbrown z6.5 MA (My Page) on
Wed, Jul 25, 12 at 7:01

Kimm, did you notice that the OP said they are in an asian country? So it's a fair bet that other gardeners there are not using synthesized salt fertilizers.

Try to think outside your paradigm once in a while.

It is fairly commonplace on these forums for persons to ignore non-NorthAmerican posters. One of the more amusing of these I noticed, years ago, was someone who admonished the poster from Malaysia to first contact his county agent. See your ''local'' [whatever] is a common mystery-meat response.

I rarely note these quirks as most posters don't bother to list their location.

on one of the other forums now about drought, someone has tried to diminish my imput.

the most common form of feeding the soil is human waste in asia not many poor type gardeners use or can afford chemical man made fertilisers.

this is a world village, we talk over the back fence there are no barriers.

i tell what works for me, it is up to the recipient gardener to take from that what they can sue or reject it, it is not up to other posters to attempt to scensor what i or others might say.

so back to topic, this block we just bought and built on had good looking clay loamy soil both red and brown, with clay under perfect for the use of gypsum. all plants and grasses on the block were growing strong and healthy, that indicates healthy soil, the land has supported radiata pine plantations, that says there could be some acidity so using some dolomite won't hurt.

our av' rain fall will be around the 600 to 800 mm range, all plants we have planted some 30 or so are thriving, that says without a soil test our observations are close to the mark. anyone find anything wrong with that experience.

we do NOT need science in anyway, shape or form, we mimic nature.

now lets help our asian friend.

len

To the OP: What I would do in that situation is
(1)try to positively identify the flora that is growing naturally around your garden.
(2) since you have internet, try googling the plant characteristics until you ID the specimens.
(3) with the naturally occurring plants ID'ed, research each one to find out what type of soils they like, and what nutrient deficiencies they might indicate.

It is going to take a while since it will be like a crime scene investigation, but you should be able see some patterns emerging that could indicate common factor(s) about your soils.

Back in the day people just went by with "What grows well here" information given by the elder gardeners, so the knowledge was both open sourced and local to the area.

hope this helps a bit.