Chris's 2021 Soil Test

[detrotirocker99]

I am located in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of North Texas. You have been helping me with soil management at my previous residence. However, we moved last August! The lawn looked fabulous and was the talk of the neighborhood, and I appreciate the guidance given by you Andy.

Our new residence is a single-family construction built in 2018. Front lawn size is approximately 1,100 sq ft with Emerald Zoysia grass. It was maintained at about 2.5" HOC by the previous owner, but have now scalped the lawn with my Baroness LM56 down to 0.25". We'll see how it reacts this spring. For the remainder of the growing season last year (i.e., August - October), I used Lesco 27-0-0. I use Specticle G for my pre-emergent (March 1 and September 1), and the yard receives between 0.5-1.0" water per week, depending on the weather. The backyard is turf

Depth of the sample was between 3 - 4" and done with the AA method as instructed. I am used to micros, so please feel free to suggest if those are needed as well.

As always, thank you for your help!

[MorpheusPA]

You got me this year, but can certainly feel free to yell for Andy. Since this ain't your first rodeo, I'll just hit what needs doing.

OM 0.90%: Extremely low. Always mulch mow, mow any leaves, and mow garden waste into your lawn where you can (certainly nothing that might be seeding out weed seeds or anything, but anything else, yes). It'll help mitigate your pH the tiniest bit. When you can, feeding organically would be a good thing, but since we make adjustments synthetically, that's a while yet...

Sulfur 170: It's high for your OM, so I detect Andy's hand here. It's certainly not a problem, just an idle observation.

Phosphorus 61: Still very low, but this takes ages to rise. Normally we'd go with starter fertilizer, but due to other shortages, I'm going to recommend a balanced fertilizer like 20-20-20 or 14-14-14. Recommendations below.

Calcium 92: Definitely your dominant ion here, so don't lime.

Magnesium 3.6: It is actually short in the soil for once, and I'm actually going to recommend tapping this, oddly enough. For this, I'm going to use Epsom salt. Just get a nice big bag from the grocery store or drugstore. If you want to use the Micronutrient Guide to do it, it's hard due to the amount; I use a hand spreader for amounts like this (you can get them at the Big Box store like HD or Lowe's or whatever your local equivalent is). Recommendations below.

Potassium 0.96: Short, but not as short as it looks. Still, this is why I recommended the balanced fertilizer above.

Micros: These look good this year. I could tap copper and zinc, but there's no real need to do so. Boron is on the nose perfect. Iron is low for your pH, but it won't be easily available anyway, and there's no reason to concern ourselves with it this year.



Recommendations:

April 1 (or close): Feed with balanced fertilizer at bag rate. Apply 2 pounds of Epsom salt per thousand square feet.

May 1: Apply 2 pounds of Epsom salt per thousand square feet. Feed with balanced fertilizer at bag rate (technically optional and an overfeed for zoysia, but...) If you don't irrigate, skip this feeding, it's too much.

September 1: Feed with balanced fertilizer at bag rate.

October 1: Feed with balanced fertilizer at bag rate. Apply 2 pounds of Epsom salt per thousand square feet.

[detrotirocker99]

Hey Morpheus, pleased to meet you! And appreciate the thorough review and recommendation.

Apologies if this is a silly question, but am I only doing the balanced fertilizer for these four months? And not for June, July and August? If I have that correct, why not for those three summer months?

[MorpheusPA]

There are no silly questions. I'm giving the soil a rest for midsummer.

I know a lot of sites recommend a midsummer feeding of Zoysia and of course I'm OK with that. I don't really want to slap the soil at that point (potassium chloride would be kind of hard on it in Texas), so if you want to use your favorite high nitrogen fertilizer at that point, that's great. I just don't need to schedule a soil application at that time as it would stress the grass. An organic feeding might be a great idea to help raise your organic matter level in the soil, like a nice app of Milorganite, but that's certainly up to you.

I usually leave other options up to you--I simply account for what I need to do. In this case, it does happen to include normal feedings for your lawn. Generally, it won't, but your read was kind of an oddball. It happens sometimes.

[detrotirocker99]

Ok, thank you for clarifying! I like to do Milorganite every 60 days or so, so I'll plan on that for the mid-summer months.

Appreciate the insight on this!

[MorpheusPA]

NP. If you want to keep up the Milo simultaneously with this, I'm also fine with that--just do it in June and August! It'll add plenty of P to the soil all by itself, which I'm completely OK with as you're very short. As long as there's a month or so (three weeks is more than fine) between this and the synthetics going down, it'll be entirely enough.

[John P]

....Micros: These look good this year. I could tap copper and zinc, but there's no real need to do so. Boron is on the nose perfect. Iron is low for your pH, but it won't be easily available anyway, and there's no reason to concern ourselves with it this year.

Hope you guys do not mind if I butt in with a quick question --
His Aluminum ppm does not bother you?
I ask because its almost the same value as mine (I am in the same state)
I read somewhere recently that high Al combined with high pH can burn roots in high temps.

[MorpheusPA]

It shouldn't be an issue, no. Al is toxic to plants (and directly to some animals, indirectly to others), but only to plants at low pH. (You just hit kind of a pet peeve of mine).

(As a sidenote, for this reason, I recommend never using aluminum sulfate to lower pH and using alternate methods instead--there are plenty--as there's no reason to potentially release a toxic element into the environment that impacts aquatic creatures. I've actually left a site recently simply because I've been argued to death on this for no good reason, and on other points for no better reason than for people to be mindlessly contrary).

While Al has a variable effect on plants, sometimes positive, depending: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 01767/full

...most find it rather toxic in lower pH soils. But it's strongly bound in the pH ranges in which our grasses grow best. It's most often used on hydrangea, with the claim made that they're also aluminum-resistant. They're not. Shove the pH too low and watch aluminum toxicity come into play.

But I digress. 200 ppm aluminum actually isn't that high; I've seen Al go to 1000 or more in clay soils (where aluminum compounds are part of the clay itself), and that also won't be a problem.

My own soil runs around 700 ppm.

[John P]

...But I digress. 200 ppm aluminum actually isn't that high; I've seen Al go to 1000 or more in clay soils (where aluminum compounds are part of the clay itself), and that also won't be a problem.
My own soil runs around 700 ppm.

Excellent response. Thank you for taking the time.

[andy10917]

I use 2,000 PPM at a pH below 5.2 as a toxicity alarm, for grass. For other garden plants, it varies a lot.

[MorpheusPA]

Yeah, but you're sensible. This one was arguing that pouring it on and a pH of 4.5 wasn't a potential issue and there was no reason to be concerned even near waterways. I was recommending judicious use of dug-in (or at least scratched-in) sulfur and ferrous sulfate instead to drop and maintain pH levels to turn hydrangea pink. While being counterargued that ferrous sulfate was the toxic substance...

I just let my hydrangea do what they want; usually light blue, nicely non-toxic soils.