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Post by littleminnie on Aug 6, 2015 20:36:56 GMT -5
  Pretty poor soil. Very coarse, lifeless sand. I am surprised at the ph though. I plan on getting in a cover crop with fall rains this year and then in spring just concentrating on manuring and planting in a small portion. The rest will be cover cropped and turned under a couple times. I will still put some crops at the rented field- the low maintenance ones. Lots of disease there this year! I have rye and red clover seed. P.S. the penciled numbers are from my last soil test of my rented land for comparison. |
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Post by philagardener on Aug 6, 2015 21:10:05 GMT -5
Did you pool samples from several different locations? Those are really low numbers . . . Has anyone grown any crops on that land before it was subdivided?
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Post by littleminnie on Aug 6, 2015 21:56:27 GMT -5
Yes I took a tablespoon at a time from all over the 2 acres. I think a long time ago it was crop land (I hope so to get the high tunnel!) but it has just been fallow for some time. Sparse weeds even with the abundance of rain this year. I am thinking about dumping compost and manure on as much as 32 50ft beds next year and probably also some perennials. With the disease at the rental field this year and the fact that the pump is broken and I am using just a spigot on the barn to irrigate, I have changed my plan of prepping the new land for a whole season. It will be best to limit my CSA members to those from this year and to skip market and just do my best with what I have. I guess I figure on farming total of 1/2- 2/3 of what I am this year and also get the fruit trees, rhubarb and asparagus planted.
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Post by Walk on Aug 7, 2015 7:45:37 GMT -5
Yes I took a tablespoon at a time from all over the 2 acres. If you only took a tablespoon of soil from each sampling point, you do not have an accurate test sample. You need to take a 6" deep plug or take a 6" cut with a stainless steel spade and cut a 1" slice from it. After the plugs are dry, you thoroughly mix all the samples together then send in about a cup of this blend. If you only took from the very top of each sampling spot, the real numbers could be worse for some, like organic matter, and some could be higher like potassium and magnesium. That being said, it doesn't look like soil suitable for vegetable production at this time. You need as much organic matter as you can get your hands on, then retest properly after that application as the o.m. will change some of the other numbers significantly. |
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Post by littleminnie on Aug 7, 2015 22:26:55 GMT -5
I went down a few inches but that was all.
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