First of all, this is not the soil that I have been using for the last 6 or 7 years. This is soil where I want to move the patch next year.
Naturally, the soil that is part of my general garden gets less attention than the soil in my usual patch. It doesn't get "zero" attention, but it gets less. A few numbers in this report are quite a bit worse than ones from my soil test about five years ago.
My pH is 7.9, up from 7.3!
My organic matter is 2.1, down from 2.3.
Everything else seems pretty standard. One bright spot is that my salts are now 2.1, which is quite high, but a much better reading than 5 years ago when it was over 6!
At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to move the patch or not. I think what this tells me is what I already knew... just add organic matter. The difficult thing is that I live in a desert, and organic matter is sometimes hard to find in any volume. In fact, most agricultural activities around here are wheat and potatoes, and very little cattle, so again, sometimes it's hard to find manure other than from individual homeowners, one pickup load at a time.
One thing has me puzzled. The test shows my sulphur to be very high. Of course, sulfur is something you add to reduce pH... I haven't added sulphur in years (other than ammonium sulfate for nitrogen) and so it looks like adding sulphur is not in the cards for reducing pH.
Please comment, right here in the blog.
NOTE: I'm not at home, and I'm having difficulty posting the *.pdf file to the blog. I'll put it up soon.
2 comments:
7.9 is about what we expect from our soil around here. That is about what mine has been for several years. Don't let that discourage you. I was amazed how much my pH fluctuated on one plant site this year. I tested 5 times on the same planting site and my pH results were 6.2,6.9, 6.9, 7.0, 7.7. I did nothing to alter the pH during the growing season.
Was your sulfur that high in the other patch? Fallout from the FMC plant?
Straw can be picked up in the fall fairly cheaply. I mix it in to help with the organic matter. There has to be a dairy around somewhere that would help out with the manure. You may still have to get it one load at a time.
Brian
That's one reason why I'm so lax in getting soil tests. Particularly the pH, how do you trust the number? Maybe I thought I was better all these years when my test showed 7.3.
I don't have any explanation for the high sulfur. I did add sulphur some years ago. But I've been staying away from sulphur and gypsum for years, and particularly where this sample came from, there really hasn't been anything added.
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