Calling out for HELP w/Soil Test

[ftwzorzoy]

Hello Everyone. I want to be the next success story for this site! I have been reading the forum and printing articles from this website for a couple months now. Please help me make sense of the soil test results and instruct me on what else I need to do. Here is a little background:
Location: DFW, TX
Grass: Zorro Zoysia
Front: 2205 sq.ft. (approx)
Back: 700 Sq.ft. (approx)
No Irrigation System.
May have a disease or two!! I will try to get pictures posted soon.



Thank you for time and help.

[andy10917]

Welcome!!

I want to be the next success story for this site!

Sorry, we're booked on "success stories" through 2015. We do have a special this week on "weedy failures" - can we help you with one of those?

Just kidding!

This soil test result set is tricky, and I can't get to it in detail until later this evening (travel day Boston=>NY). Advice: don't race out to buy anything until you get all the details laid out on why this is tricky...

[MorpheusPA]

Yeah, free range calcium.

OK. We work with it...

P: Fine in back, but I'd like to tap the front a little bit. Apply any starter fertilizer at bag rate in September and October, and re-test next year.

K: Fine, actually, the numbers look low because of the Ca levels. I'd ignore this for this year.

Iron: Low. Bag rate of Milorganite as the budget will bear to raise this.

[ftwzorzoy]

Andy- Bermuda is the only weed I am fighting to keep out right now. My biggest problem seems to be disease. I am 100% sure that I experienced rust this spring, but not sure what disease my grass is suffering from this summer.
Morph- Thank you for your suggestions. I did apply Milorganite this season along with a lot of other products. Should I add another bag of Milorganite??

Is it common to have a huge difference in numbers between the front and back yards? Could one of the sulfer numbers be a typo?

[andy10917]

Somehow I lost this one - sorry!!

As Morph said, you have a lot of "free Calcium", which means that you have so much Calcium that it is not bound to soil, but instead it can inflate the TEC number. I was not at all shocked when I saw the Calcium number and the TEC to find it was the DFW area - the area is famous for it.

I will bet my lawn that you don't have a real TEC of 35.

That's important - because every other number works off of that number. Once you learn how to spot it, sanity rules the day.

+1 on what Morph said.

I suspect that the Sulfur number is coming from same natural Gypsum in the soil - otherwise there would be a much larger drop in pH due to the Gypsum.

In the micronutrients, you're OK across the board - Boron is a teensy bit below perfect, but not worth bothering with.

Don't let anyone tell you to use Sulfur to combat your pH - you could throw your life savings into Sulfur and never put a dent into your pH. It's OK though - you can do fine with those numbers. Use some Milorganite or foliar Iron if the color of the lawn is an issue.