Spooky Action Ranch Report | Week Thirty-three, 2015

August 10th to 16th, 2015 Soil Testing We received our soil testing results this week.  We took separate samples from four of our raised beds, because we wanted to test to see if the beds had any variations in the nutrients available to the plants.  Last year we took samples from all the beds and combined them into one sample for testing, but we worried that this process did not give us a granular enough view of what was happening in the garden.    As it turned out, there are only very minor variations from bed to bed and the results were very similar to what we saw last year with the combined test. As we had already known, our Phosphorus levels are quite high.  We are not absolutely certain how the levels became so elevated, but we have a pretty good guess.  Last summer, when our plants were not thriving, we purchased a great deal of turkey and cow manure compost to augment the nutrients and organic matter in our soil.  We applied several inches of this compost to each of our beds. It is important to note that compost, made up of food scraps and yard debris, is quite different from composted manure.  A distinction we were not really aware of at the time.  As it turns out, composted manure can have wildly varied nutrient availability depending upon the diet of the animals producing it, and cows will pass almost 85% of the phosphorus in what they eat on into the soil.  It may be that the manure we received had very elevated levels of phosphorus, which we passed on into our garden at a very high application rate. The problem with high phosphorous levels is that phosphorous can lock nutrients into inaccessible states so that they cannot be absorbed by the plants.  Even though we have sufficient nutrients in the soil, as our tests show, our plants are still experiencing nutrient deficiencies due to the over action of phosphorus in our soil. Luckily, there is a fairly simple remedy for the high phosphorous problem, and that is a foliar application of iron and zinc. We have been using Liquinox Liquid Fully Chelated Iron & Zinc since receiving the high phosphorous reading last year and are pretty happy with the results.  I do notice that the plants perk up after using it and it is wonderfully easy to use.  I find giving the plants a misty bath of supplements in the evening a very pleasant experience, and that is a good thing, since it looks like we will need to continue to do so for many seasons to come.  High phosphorous levels can persist for as long...

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