soil test

[Irisbergamot]

Hey guys
I got 3 tests. Get in line for next year? Or is there some room to get it in now?

A quick no will suffice and no need to add this to the forum if that's the case.

thanks for all you do.

[andy10917]

My spreadsheets are all ripped apart to make changes for 2021. No go.

[MorpheusPA]

If you already have the tests, post them. I'll be happy to take a look. If you're planning on getting tests, wait until early spring.

In Ontario, being able to perform corrections over winter is unlikely to impossible anyway, so you're not losing much, if any, time either way.

[Irisbergamot]

Hey thanks guys.




This is my friend's lawn. He has learned from my mistake of not starting with a soil test.
He is a novice. Able to commit to entire season front yard irrigation while letting rainfall provide for the back.
His mowing practices are perfect. He has all herbicides on hand for every level of the triangle as well as pre-em.
Lawn is full of weeds and they will be tackled diligently this upcoming season with a tentative PRG over seed in the fall.

average soil temps for region
50f in mid April
first frost in mid Oct

Front- 1300 sqft
Back 1- 2000 sqft
Back 2- 1800 sqft

products on hand
4-4-0 Milo equivalent
25-5-10 with 2.5%Mg (50% slow)
24-0-6 with 2.0%Mg (50% slow)
8-4-20 with 2.0%Mg
15-15-15
Urea

Only looking for Simple Approach (unless best approach is not too out of range for a novice

thanks in advance...
(will post in the queue when this gets posted)

[MorpheusPA]

You can skip the queue, although I'll simply post there as well if I see it. The queue goes down in November when the formal evaluation period goes down--I'm slipping this one in because I have time.

This soil is funkadelic and requires some explanation. It also has a bit (just a bit) of a split personality; front and back 1 are fairly strongly related. Back 2 is less strongly related to the other two in many ways (but also has some relations to front that back 1 doesn't). Like I said, funkadelic. My typical habit is, since your friend paid $60 for these tests, to go line by line and explain what he got for his money, at least the first time. Recommendations are at the bottom.

Exchange Capacity: 11-15 -- All in a line and closer than they seem. These are overinflated by the fact that the soil has a lot of calcium and the answer for all three is really closer to Back 3's 11 (which is itself a little overinflated) than the 15 front 1 got. For purposes of adding anything, I'm just calling it around 10, that's good enough. Overall, for the area, make me guess and I'd say overall you have a sandy-silty mix, but with this soil, it's going to be more granular due to the excess calcium.

pH: 8, 8, 7.8: Not a terribly useful number, but people seem to like it. It's a sum of the calcium, magnesium, and so on in the soil, and in this case, it means the sum total is pretty alkaline. We just live with it and work with it. More on the ion balances later. A lot more.

OM: 3-ish to 4-ish percent: Pretty good! In high pH soils, I never mind seeing more--a lot more--OM, but as per a recent deep dive text I posted, you're at the point where this is now questionable in terms of making anything available to the grass. Still, it's helpful. So, always mulch mow. Mow in fall leaves. Feed organically if desired (I would). This is not a problem and need not be addressed, but higher would be nicer.

Sulfur: 10-ish: Normal. There's huge margins for additions. Any added sulfur will happily find a calcium or magnesium ion, bind, and wash out as a salt. That's a good thing.

Phosphorus: 62, 96, 181: This is the first di...er, trichotomy in the soil. From front 1 to back 2, it gets progressively better, but all three are short at that pH. My target for a pH that high would probably be around 300 or even 350 due to the fact that P just isn't available at that pH. I'm...not entirely comfortable with the above available list, but I'll work with it if I have to. Recommendations below.

Calcium: 83-89%: High, but you won't change it. High calcium is not a problem, so we simply ignore it since there's nothing we can do, and account for it by increasing the amounts of other things to compensate.

Magnesium: 4-7%: This looks low, but it really isn't, and amounts in the soil are fine. I'm not inclined to change this at all at this time--or ever. Raising this comes with some consequences (tightened, cracked soils) that I'd rather avoid. There's no need to play with that, so let's avoid adding magnesium. It's not necessary anyway, you really do have plenty.

Potassium: 2, 2.5, 5%: OK-ish, OK, Great: I actually wouldn't mind reversing the slight negatives here as doing so comes without consequences and going a tad high also comes without consequences (and has some advantages like cold resistance, disease resistance, and so on). I've included it in the recommendations below for Front 1 and Front 2.

Sodium: I didn't call them out specifically, they're all close. A little high, which is problematic, although not terribly at this point (it's not THAT high). It kicks up the pH even more. To dump it out would require...yet more calcium. For now, I'd put it on a watch list for the next tests.

Minor Elements: Boron is a tad low in front, but not enough to really worry about.

Iron is low across the board, but you're in a pH regime where I'm not sure I'd worry about it that much. OK, that's not strictly true; I'd push iron up. Other people might not.

Retest in...well, dealer's call here. 2021 if you're a hobbyist. 2022 if you're interested. 2023 if you're a homeowner.

Recommendations 2021 (restricted to listed available products):
If there's no 2021 test, carry this into 2022. If there's no 2022 test, move to using 25 pounds of 4-4-0 across the whole property at each date instead.
(Note: I'm not entirely comfortable with the available products, but I've restricted myself to them)

May 25th, or around Victoria Day: Front1, Back 1: Apply 15-15-15 at around 7 pounds per thousand square feet. Back 2: Apply 4-4-0 at around 25 pounds per thousand (this can be done on May 10th instead).

September 1: Front1, Back 1: Apply 15-15-15 at around 7 pounds per thousand square feet. Back 2: Apply 4-4-0 at around 25 pounds per thousand (can be applied around August 15th instead).

October 1: Front1, Back 1: Apply 15-15-15 at around 7 pounds per thousand square feet. Back 2: Apply 4-4-0 at around 25 pounds per thousand (can be applied as early as September 15th).

Last Mow: Front1, Back 1, Back 2: Use a good winterizer with high nitrogen, low everything else, no Mg at bag rate.

[Irisbergamot]

This truly is amazing, thank you so much.
Without this knowledge, I would have steered him into other strange directions.
So it's fair to say that apart from the winterizer, he's throwing down roughly 3 pounds of N for the season?

also... these products are just what we have kicking around our sheds...
for organics we have the the 4-4-0 (Milo equivalent in Canada) as well as a 9-2-2 +2% iron (not sure if its biosolid - https://www.homehardware.ca/en/25kg-9-2 ... /p/5024216)
we also have access to some other ratios at local co-ops and box stores....
any potential for improved outcomes if we switch up the products?

[MorpheusPA]

I'd be fine with 9-2-2 in back-2 and with 2022 if there's no soil test until that year (this is an organic, and it's just fine). It does contain iron but, again, at this pH, that's of limited use. Almost the moment the iron releases, it locates a free alkaline radical and binds up either to that or it oxidizes immediately to rust. This is wonderful if you're making an ochre soil, not so great if you want good color in your lawn.

These are in your sheds? Use up the 15-15-15 first. Free is always best, it's...free!

"25-5-10 with 2.5%Mg (50% slow)
24-0-6 with 2.0%Mg (50% slow)"

I'm not going to recommend these for winterization due to the slow-release N here (I don't have a great feel for your winter weather) and the magnesium isn't necessary for your neighbors' soil. I'm not familiar with your soil test personally, so can't make a recommendation there either. If magnesium is not in excess and you don't need phosphorus and potassium isn't at ridiculous levels, you could use these for your own May and September feedings, though.

In the case that your winters up there (again, I'm clueless) tend to not feature ground freeze until very late, or no ground freeze at all, then these are also OK if your soil test falls in the above specs. For me, I'd be OK using these as freeze isn't often until January with growth stoppage in November (if the ground fully freezes at all, which it often doesn't).

I'm shooting for around the average for a northern mixed lawn, which is usually 2-5 pounds of N per season. 3 pounds without winterizer. 4 pounds of N with it. I'd rather see the winterizer applied, but it's not strictly necessary. The feeding is high enough to encourage bluegrass without being ridiculous (although I apply 6 pounds of N per year, which still isn't ridiculous).

While I could make other recommendations, again ... free ... and they're ones your neighbor will stick to, that's probably best. I set recommendations lower than I normally would to account for chemical forms I don't favor--what's going to be available easily is going to be potassium chloride, which is not my favorite thing. It's OK, and what I did was to set the application amounts low, about a third of what I'd normally recommend with my more-favored potassium sulfate. While both are salts, on the salt index, potassium chloride has a salt strength of 120 (very, very high and quite likely to burn a lawn if applied at too high a level), while potassium sulfate's is 42 (much lower, about a third).

Therefore, simply apply a third as much and...bingo. Adjust for the probable nitrogen source (I assume highly salty urea) and work from there. I may not be a hundred percent happy with it, but it works, and if you need both P and K, 15-15-15 is an all-in-one solution I'm really not that unhappy with. You just can't winterize with it as the P is likely to end up in that pretty lake and those rivers of yours eventually and nobody wants that.

The only reason I don't recommend the organics for the last shot of the year is that they don't decay well in the cold and don't feed the lawn well that cold either. Once soil temperatures fall under fifty, it's like the refrigerator. Things stay good longer...and for feeding a soil, that's a bad thing.

[bpgreen]

I'm not sure where in Ontario the poster is, but I had a project in Toronto and was there during the winter. It's colder than Philly, but not as brutal as Minneapolis. It's pretty close (geographically) to Buffalo (some of the people on the project would fly to Buffalo and drive to Toronto because st the time you needed a passport to fly to Canada, but not to drive).

I'm not sure if that helps.

[bpgreen]

I'm not sure where in Ontario the poster is, but I had a project in Toronto and was there during the winter. It's colder than Philly, but not as brutal as Minneapolis. It's pretty close (geographically) to Buffalo (some of the people on the project would fly to Buffalo and drive to Toronto because st the time you needed a passport to fly to Canada, but not to drive).

I'm not sure if that helps.

[MorpheusPA]

That does help! Call it Pittsburgh plus more cold plus snow, then.

Winterization with some slow N isn't too major an issue. I'd avoid it if possible but it's not the severe error it would be in Minneapolis or most of Nebraska and northward.

[Irisbergamot]

Hey guys
The house is 1 hour north of Toronto with snow cover from Oct to March and air temps from -4f to 0f.

Morpheus thanks so much, this is great.
We'll just stick with the urea for a winterizer.

With this fert schedule is it ok to allow for rainfall irrigation alone in the front (same as what he's doing in the back)?
and
do you think I should teach him how to do FAS for color.... or should he be ok considering what's going on in the soil?

[MorpheusPA]

You're more likely to not have time for winterizer and to use the October one as winterizer. That's fine. To me, you live in the Arctic. It's currently fifty degrees.

If things are that chill, August may be cold enough to feed and irrigate depending on when "late summer" is. My uncle used to visit Canada a lot (he ran tours in summer as he was a teacher) and said the "winter and Fourth of July" joke was fairly accurate for parts of it. If mid-August is already cooling from summer, you can start the feeding cycle then instead of September first. If the break is earlier, go earlier. The environmental key is the drop in temperature from summer, particularly at night, and rain and irrigation hang around a little longer because of that. Grass growth increases a bit as well.

You can use rainfall as irrigation if you want (I do). In the case of a really dry September, just skip the October app. Although in that case, he's probably irrigating anyway.

He can do FAS or just sprayed ferrous sulfate if he wants, or nothing at all. At first, I think I'd just go with a good feeding schedule with the right stuff to improve the nutrients in the soil. Grass quality should increase enough over the next year to get him firmly addicted to grass care. Then we'll move him over to the expensive and time-consuming addictions.

If you want to show him what spraying a few square feet looks like, sure. But it's not going to harm the grass if it's not sprayed, it can access enough iron to survive. Just not to look anything other than fairly pale at that pH.

[Irisbergamot]

My sled dogs and I thank you. Truly.
All the best to you this season Morpheus.
Strange this day and age.... not used to getting help for free.
You're doing the Lord's work

[MorpheusPA]

De nada, Happy Holidays and a great New Year! We hang around and do stuff for fun, that's our pay off.