My question. If I got a soil test done, should I test the native soil or the amended soil? Or both?

Is it better to send it off or use home testing?

Thx. I grow mainly roses and want to balance the fertilizer to the actual soil. Thx!

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.

I just have two different areas of concern. I suppose I could do two tests!! One on the unadulterated native soil, and one on the compost/imported soil/mulch blend I have achieved in the raised beds.

I am trying to plant more roses in the yard and median areas, and it won't have benefit of imported soil, only native and compost blend with a bit of expanded shale. But then after a year of two, growing into pure native 'decent' clay that has been here forever, and probably had the benefit of years of natural composting.

Thanks, I feel my fertilizing/improving efforts are just a stab in the dark with out this testing!

Interesting forum, thanks for your input!

Mackel

statements like these:

“You don’t have to have your soil tested.”

I am beginning to think the extra few $ for the N test is not worth it, though, because it *does* change seasonally and it also sounds like everyone gets the same recommendation - add N.

Organic matter, pH, P and K, and Ca, Mg and other micronutrients would be the tests I would run.

Mackel

Idk, I'm just trying to do it right. And appreciate the input.

Tox. Great advise on just paying for one sample. I'll order it as you specified.

Mack.. It'll probably come as you say regarding nitrogen. But I think I'll investigate.

Kimm. I appreciate the drainage test, I think that is an issue in some areas, but I've never known how to find out.

Mackel

Mackel re soil in Texas, do you think they are not really testing the soil and just sending the same forum letter out? Are soils in Texas all low nitrogen? If you create a sample with a lot of compost as a test, will be come back low nitrogen? If you mixed up homemade compost or maybe coffee grounds in your sample would be come back high or normal nitrogen? Is it worth creating a test for them?

Mackel

I confess I didn't Google the Texas Lab, it's time consuming enough to sift through these threads and understand what people are saying without having to look up all their references. If it's that important, maybe you can quote it or at least put a link in your post.

Mackel

You might be a soil genius, but your know it all attitude puts people off.

Mackel

Mackel

Lloyd

Mackel

>>I think people post to hear themselves.

Broad brush, don't you think? I post to try to help people. I enjoy helping people if I can.

>I find ignorant, counter effective advice daily. It intrigues the teacher in me.

Welcome to the interwebs. So, no comment on the statement that you come on a bit too strong? You seem to have an overdeveloped sense of your own correctness and authority in all things soil related. I admit I'm not perfect, but I don't see the same in your posts.

>This forum is functionally a social group and not much more.

I disagree. There is a lot of information and viewpoints here as well as experiences from the trenches. But, if it's too social for you and isn't 'where people post who know their $h!t', no one's forcing you to read it.

>I'm probably codependent since I never divorced. You may be codependent, you drift in and out of responding to posts directed at you, at kimmsr, and to a general audience. You challenge, I respond. What's missing?

That's the nature of a discussion forum. We talk among ourselves and to the general audience. No idea what the codependency stuff is about here, I don't see how it's relevant to where my posts are directed. By the way, by responding to me directly, aren't you 'drifting'? :-]

>I don't hate anybody, TC, are you feeling something- it's you.

I never suggested you did or even used the word. I meant you come across as arrogant and dismissive, at least in writing.

As always, my attitude is "For Pete's sake, it's only a compost forum!"

Mackel

Mackel

Lloyd

I think people post to hear themselves. In which case I am thinking mackel must really enjoy his own pearls of wisdom since he posts so flippin' often! And cuz they are being ignored/wasted on the rest of us.

Hey, you go take eight hours of biochemistry and organic chemistry each first, then make fantasitc statements, wouldya couldya. Maybe, maybe not. But you're too full of vinegar right now to know it.

You also have a long history of getting into it with other posters, I'd say you and kimmsr have been guilty of that over the years more than anybody. Let her rip!

Mackel

"4. So the gardener does not spend money, unnecessarily, on some kind of lime that may not correct the problem but can get the right lime."-

There is no right lime. Now the thought of lime is in the newcomer's head. A lot of yankees come down here and lime the soil, and they are very sad cuz it ruins the garden for a few years. It's limey soil from the bottom of an ancient ocean..

This throws the newcomer off for the product even being mentioned, and I can go back and show that these types of comments are clustered amongst a very tiny number of posters.

It's all about not offering helpful specifics, putting on useless airs, and sprinkling pixie dust everywhere.. Why even mention lime? To show you know enough to be dangerous? And whatever happened to men, manning up?

I say, practice "Zen in the Garden", and listen to what the newcomer is saying and know the facts first... cuz they ain't gonna know what terminology, quirks, and motives (boredom?) one has, that's why they are relying on complete strangers with a question. Common courtesy demands concision in this type of exchange, no?...maybe so...

Mackel

Mackel

Mackel

"In both the FAO and USA soil taxonomy, a vertisol is a soil in which there is a high content of expansive clay known as montmorillonite that forms deep cracks in drier seasons or years. Alternate shrinking and swelling causes self-mulching, where the soil material consistently mixes itself, causing vertisols to have an extremely deep A horizon and no B horizon. (A soil with no B horizon is called an A/C soil). This heaving of the underlying material to the surface often creates a microrelief known as gilgai."-

[the gilgai, which are deep microcracks in the soil, swallow up foreign surface soils. The closest non-vertisol source for Dallas is approximately a four hour round trip...]

"...natural vegetation of vertisols is grassland, savanna, or grassy woodland."

Mackel