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joe1988_gw

Soil Test Results

Joe1988
9 years ago

Merry Day after Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday season!

I had a few questions for all your experienced gardeners.
but first a little back story.

My family owns and operates a fairly large bait business in the four corners area. For 22 years infact, over the years I have perfected the art of "dirt making" so that our night crawlers can thrive while they wait for they're trip to the store.

Recently we had our soil tested at Colorado State University for various things from gardening soil to how many Micro Organisms are in it!

These are our results, However I am not an experienced gardener and have little knowledge on these scores. I am asking you all Are these good? do they compare with any of your own?

pH: 7.2
pH 6 to 7.2 is the preferred pH range for growth of most plants.

Electrical Conductivity or Salts: 0.9 mmhos/cm
E.C. is Low. When E.C. less than 2.0, salinity is not a problem for plant growth.

Lime: Low
Low: Lime is less than 1% in the soil. Plants can still grow well at this lime level

Texture Estimate: Sandy Loam
This soil will drain at a medium to high rate which may cause it to dry out rapidly. Watering times may have to be
increased to compensate for the rapid drainage.

Organic Material: 15.5 %
Organic Matter is High; no additional OM e.g. compost is needed.

Nitrate: 116 ppm
Nitrate-nitrogen is very high. Additional nitrogen is not needed at this time. Excessive nitrogen may cause bushy
plants with small fruit. Early planting in the spring will help make use of the additional nitrogen to allow plants to
produce more flowers and develop larger fruit. Trees may not flower as expected. Very high nitrogen at mid season
may result in bushy plants with few flowers.

Phosphorus: 34 ppm
Phosphorus is High; No additional Phosphorus is needed.

Potassium: 660.6 ppm
Potassium is High; No additional K20 is needed

Zinc: 30.6 ppm
Zinc is Adequate; No additional Zn is needed

Iron: 46.6 ppm
Iron is Adequate; No additional Iron (Fe) is needed

Manganese: 11.9 ppm
Manganese is Adequate; No additional Mn is needed.

Copper: 1.7 ppm
Copper is Adequate; No additional Cu is needed.

Boron: 0.50 ppm
Boron is High. No additional boron is needed

I copied this from the Adobe file that was emailed to me from CSU. I hope some of you may help me understand these numbers better and let me know if they would be useful to gardeners. Anyway I look forward to hearing from you! have a wonderful day!

Comments (15)

  • Joe1988
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    We also had it tested for Microbial activity and these 3 were most prominent

    Filamentous fungi as mycorrhizal fungi

    Actinomycetes as actinomyces

    Nitrifying bacteria as nitrosomonas and nitrobacter

    when i googled these things it gets very confusing and i got lost quickly ha ha.

  • Kimmsr
    9 years ago

    The people at Colorado State will tell you that the amount of organic matter in soil is optimally 5 percent, while my experience (and that of many people I correspond with) is that OM of 6 to 8 percent is better, however, 15 plus percent is high. A soil pH of 7.2 is okay, and many of us have soil pH's in that range when we get the amount of organic matter in the soil in the range of 6 to 8 percent.
    Of less interest is the amount of Lime in soil, Calcium and Magnesium (constituents of Lime) need to be there because all plants need them, in balance for optimal growth.
    I would talk with the county horticulturist more about that soil test, especially since you are paying for one.

  • kokopelli5a
    9 years ago

    Ah, the elusive "sandy loam" I've been reading about on the backs of seed packets all these years.

    You are missing a bet. Package the stuff in the most elaborate 5pound package you can. Point out in your advertising materials that this is essential to the fabulously successful "joekultur" method. Sell to the fancy people at the ski resorts and Santa few.

  • lazy_gardens
    9 years ago

    Basically, you have decent gardening soil, probably because you have been cultivating nightcrawlers.

    Do you have any specific concerns about the soil, or problems with plants?

    ======
    The bacterial analysis ... you have fungi, actinomycetes and a couple of species of nitrogen fixers. That's good.

  • Joe1988
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    Thank you all for your responses!

    Since the soil tests were done it was suggested to us that we make a "tea" with some of the soil and pour it onto our house plants and see what happens, mostly because of large amounts of micro organisms that were found in the tests.

    The results have been pretty amazing plants that were just living and not really producing flowers are now very happy, with new buds everywhere!
    So i guess I answered my own questions with my hands on testing.

    HAHA kokopelli5a! Is sandy loam really good? or is it just a myth that yuppies believe?

  • kokopelli5a
    9 years ago

    I don't know if "sandy loam" is really good any more than I would know if a chupacabra is really bad as they are both mythological.

  • Kimmsr
    9 years ago

    Sandy Loam can be just as productive as any other good healthy soil, provided it is well endowed with organic matter like any other soil should be.

  • tcstoehr
    9 years ago

    Your Potassium is high like mine, and likely to get higher and higher if you're adding outside sources of compost. I don't know how to lower Potassium, maybe just add a bunch of everything else. 8^)
    This does point out a pitfall of adding outside composts and manures. You will likely get some overabundant minerals, especially Potassium.

  • Kimmsr
    9 years ago

    High numbers may, or may not, be of concern. It depends on balance. If P is high and the rest are low, unbalanced, there would be reason for concern. Most people seem to concentrate on Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potash and appear to forget the other 13 essential macro and micro nutrients all plants need for good healthy growth, and compost can provide all of those essential nutrients pretty much in balance.

  • toxcrusadr
    9 years ago

    Do you grow anything in this soil or just add organic matter to it for the worms to feed on? Because I would grow a garden in that stuff. Particularly greens, which would help with the high N level. You could even put a cold frame down and grow them into the winter and early in the spring. You may or may not have trouble with too much green growth and not enough fruit on tomatoes, etc. due to the high N. K and P are also high though, so it might be just fine. You'd just have to try it.

    A garden is probably the best way to harvest some of those excess nutrients.

  • zzackey
    9 years ago

    The university should tell you what your soil needs to improve it. It's part of the soil testing in Florida that they explain the results for you and what you should do to correct it.

  • Kimmsr
    9 years ago

    zackey, the soil tests done by state universities all contain recommendations for correcting any noted problems, and if asked will be based on organic practices. I have not seen the same information supplied by many of the commercial soil testing labs.

  • Joe1988
    Original Author
    9 years ago

    What about the micro organisms? from what ive read online they are very useful to growers of all kinds. and many soils dont contain as many anymore due to over use of chemicals and other man made fertilizers.

  • wayne_5 zone 6a Central Indiana
    9 years ago

    We all know that night crawlers love organic matter...high, high.

  • toxcrusadr
    9 years ago

    I have not seen a garden soil tested for microbes, very interesting. Given the other results, especially the high organic matter from adding all that compost, and the fact that you're growing good worms in it, I would have assumed it was a very microbially active and healthy soil. It would only be a very useful test if there was some kind of problem with the soil (or, more to the point, the plants) that you were trying to diagnose. Basically you have a healthy microbe population as stated by someone else earlier.

    Chemical fertilizers don't actually harm microbes if applied in a reasonable amount. However, gardeners who use them tend to be the ones who neglect organic matter levels - in other words, they rely on fertilizer to feed plants rather than compost to feed the soil. So there might be a correlation between fertilizer use and a poor soil food web, but one does not necessarily cause the other.