Mitch Soil Test 2018

[Mitch]

This soil was taken from a 1000 square foot area of my front lawn located in Knoxville, TN. The house was built on a wooded and hilly lot in the mid 1990s. The front lawn area was dug down several feet which contained a lot of rocks. While taking the soil sample we unearthed several grubs and lots of small rocks at about 3-4 inches deep in several areas.

Over the years it has has been mostly weeds and clover. It is not fertilized regularly. It's been overseeded every fall with an annual rye. It usually gets killed off in the summer heat which leaves weeds for the summer.

The lawn was sodded in the spring of 2018 in an attempt to have a nice section of front lawn all year. It ended up getting completely wiped out by either fungus and/or grubs by mid summer.

I tried reseeding with Hogan's TTTF mix this fall and had great initial germination but it got wiped out quickly again.

My son in law (darkcrisis who frequents this site) said I need a soil test and will start executing the plan as soon as the weather heats back up in the spring to prepare for a successful seeding in the fall of 2019.

[andy10917]

Please update your Profile with "Lawn Size" and "Experience Level", before the test will be interpreted.

[Mitch]

Done! Thank you!

[andy10917]

I don't get to say this very often, but your problems are not coming from anything that can be seen in a soil test...

That's actually a soil that has few nutrient problems. We'll go over them, but we'll have to consider other things like slopes/rocks/irrigation/shade in a separate thread (go and open one up!).

You have a medium loam soil at a TEC of 10+, and an OM level of 5%+. Those are very, very good.

In the cations, there is a Calcium:Magnesium ratio of almost 10:1 -- again, that's very good. Yes, the Calcium is high and the Magnesium and Potassium are both abundant. This leads to a high pH, but with a couple of accommodations that's not a major challenge and shouldn't prevent seeding success. There is nothing that you will be able to do to lower that pH long-term, but it's not required anyway.

The Phosphorus level is also great.

The Iron level is good, but the elevated pH means that the Iron is not available to the lawn. We deal with that in one or two ways - using Milorganite which naturally chelates the Iron in it, and/or applying foliar Iron to the lawn. Read about foliar Iron in the Articles/FAQ areas of the site.

In the micronutrients, things are abundant except for Boron. We'll deal with that after the new thread about identifying the reason for multiple seeding failures is done.

What does this all mean? It means that the soil is not your problem, and another thread in the Cool-Season Forum is needed to locate your problem. You are blessed with a soil that requires very little supplementation - the problems are elsewhere...