Schreibdave's Soil Test

Learn how improving your soil can lead to a better looking lawn
schreibdave
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by schreibdave » September 17th, 2017, 10:45 am

Timmy - The difficulty in sourcing these things reminds me how far outside of the norm we all are.

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andy10917
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by andy10917 » September 25th, 2017, 8:26 pm

Well, this much I can say for sure -- you won't be adding Lime (of any type) anytime soon...

The soil is a nice Loam (TEC around 13) that's just a little on the heavy side. It will hold nutrients well. It's got a 4.75 OM number -- a rounding error short of the desired 5%. I'd leave the structure and composition alone.

The cations. Ummm, yeah the cations. The Calcium and Magnesium are right at the awesome 10:1 ratio, but there is just too much of them. The end-result is a pH that's gonna give you some challenges, at 7.7. This despite a pretty strong Potassium shortage.

With a Phosphorus and a Potassium shortage, I'd normally say "balanced fertilizers" for the heavy-lifting stage. If you want to go TSP/SOP instead though, we can work that side. BTW, you are three years or so from closing that Potassium shortage -- and that's only if the Calcium decides to be a nice neighbor. First we'll work on raw-number improvement.

The Iron number is phenomenal, but it just isn't available at the 7.7 pH. Milorganite/Bay State are going to be your friend here.

In the micro’s, it’s Boron and Zinc. Get Twenty Mule Team Laundry Soap (grocery) and Zinc Sulfate (Amazon/EBay), and apply each at three tablespoons/K every 60 days. Read the Micronutrient Application Guide for application specifics.

Get me the direction on Balanced vs TSP/SOP and I'll polish it...

schreibdave
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by schreibdave » September 25th, 2017, 10:39 pm

Thanks Andy. At the moment I cant find a source for SOP and TSP. Waiting on a call back from an Ag fertilizer place. That would be my preference. Give me a couple of days on that and I will let you know about balanced vs TSP/SOP.

Do soil tests ever come in and NOT require an adjustment to P and K?

I have boron and zinc from the last house so I can start that now.

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andy10917
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by andy10917 » September 25th, 2017, 11:01 pm

Do soil tests ever come in and NOT require an adjustment to P and K?
Yeah, maybe 15% of the time for Phosphorus. Potassium is the worst - it is always below the 4% of base saturation and only rarely above the raw values for the nutrient.

schreibdave
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by schreibdave » September 26th, 2017, 7:19 am

andy10917 wrote:
September 25th, 2017, 11:01 pm
Do soil tests ever come in and NOT require an adjustment to P and K?
Yeah, maybe 15% of the time for Phosphorus. Potassium is the worst - it is always below the 4% of base saturation and only rarely above the raw values for the nutrient.
So if I have a friend who wants to improve her lawn without doing a soil test (or pretty much anything that we do) having her substitute a balanced fertilizer for whatever Scotts product she is using now would be a good first step. Even if she does nothing else.


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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by ken-n-nancy » September 26th, 2017, 7:45 am

schreibdave wrote:
September 26th, 2017, 7:19 am
So if I have a friend who wants to improve her lawn without doing a soil test (or pretty much anything that we do) having her substitute a balanced fertilizer for whatever Scotts product she is using now would be a good first step. Even if she does nothing else.
If you have a friend that wants to improve her lawn, then the good first step is to do a soil test!

The $25 spent on the soil test will ensure that the money spent on fertilizer addresses the most significant problem, whatever that is, which is really difficult to guess at without having a soil test...

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andy10917
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by andy10917 » September 26th, 2017, 8:38 am

So if I have a friend who wants to improve her lawn without doing a soil test (or pretty much anything that we do) having her substitute a balanced fertilizer for whatever Scotts product she is using now would be a good first step. Even if she does nothing else.
I would like to be Pope, too. Becoming a priest would probably have been a better early-career choice though.

I will never understand the "random applications of stuff" approach to lawns and gardens. It has roughly the same success rate as "whatever's on sale".

schreibdave
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by schreibdave » September 26th, 2017, 2:29 pm

You guys are preaching to the choir. But the majority of our fellow Americans are not going to do 5% of what we do.

My own brother marvels at my lawn compared to his crappy dirt/weed yard. But every time I give him advice he ignores it and follows what his "lawn care guy" suggests.

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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by MorpheusPA » September 26th, 2017, 9:04 pm

Don't they always ignore decent advice? :-)

However, none of us are going to recommend "just throw something down" in response to a poor lawn or gardens. The reason being is that there's an excellent chance you're wasting money, doing damage to the soil, or applying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

The only "blind" application I make is a measured 4 pounds per thousand of calcitic lime to my gardens every year. The reason being that I know exactly how much urea nitrogen I put down to the nearest ounce. And how much monoammonium phosphate to the ounce. And I know how much calcium that's going to displace.

Even so, I still have the soil tested, and adjust appropriately when I have fresh results in hand. Usually I'm a little on the low side in terms of calcium because that 4 above is intentionally conservative.

So in that case, the app isn't really "blind" and I wouldn't even consider doing it--nor recommending it. Overshooting is as bad as not doing anything at all.

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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by Marinegrunt » September 27th, 2017, 10:18 am

Like Morph mentioned there's a pretty good chance they'll spend more money throwing stuff on the lawn than if they got the soil sample. You need to pound that into their head. If they don't want to listen to one of the most important pieces of advice I wouldn't listen to them. A soil sample doesn't put them in the 5% as that is the very first thing anyone should do. What puts you in the 5% is stealing your neighbor's leaves in the middle of the night while they're sleeping, driving to every Starbucks in a 50 mile radius to get used coffee grounds, spraying baby shampoo on the lawn, raking up wood shavings leftover from your chainsaw so you can spread them, etc.

If they still don't want to listen tell them to follow the Scott's 4 step and use Weed b Gone when needed. Although, they'll likely be throwing away more than the $25 soil test on nutrients that aren't needed.

schreibdave
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by schreibdave » September 27th, 2017, 11:06 am

"What puts you in the 5% is stealing your neighbor's leaves in the middle of the night while they're sleeping."

What percent are you in if you spray their dandelions after you steal their leaves? Just wondering.

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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by Marinegrunt » September 27th, 2017, 1:32 pm

Lol.... A few days ago I saw my neighbors jump in their car and leave. I grabbed the 1 gallon sprayer that has Triclopyr, ran over, and sprayed their wild violet that is sneaking towards our lawn.

If we could take a poll here I bet the number of us who have sprayed the neighbor's weeds would be higher than we think. It's hard not to spray a weed no matter where it is. I wonder how many have been caught by a neighbor who hates any and all chemicals on their lawn?

schreibdave
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Re: Schreibdave's Soil Test

Post by schreibdave » September 27th, 2017, 2:33 pm

I used to spray my neighbors weeds until mine got so dense that their weed seed had no chance of germinating. U could quickly pick that house out in google earth as the one with the dark lawn surrounded by yellow lawns.

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