2023 "Field of Dreams"

Good news, received the soil test results today. Again. Maybe this neuroticism is paying off, both in terms of the numbers themselves as well as my reaction to them.

Here’s the goods:


Summary of those test results is pretty damn good. I’ve got much higher CEC (16 vs 5ish) than when I started, so my targets for nutrients have shifted pretty dramatically. I’m much closer to being in good ranges. The levels on this test would have been really high for my soil before it was much improved. Totally different ballpark to play on now. Amazing. Shocking, really.

My K and Na are still high, you could argue my Mg is excessive but I’ll add Ca in favor of removing Mg. My N and P are lower than I want, which will also reduce my pH - it’s getting high as free nitrates are depleted. No biggie, we can add those easily, and we can deal with the salts and Ca-Mg ratio with our magical buddy Gypsum.

Here’s what I’m planning to do about it. I’ll look over these numbers again in the morning but we’re doing pretty minor course correction at this point. Green should be my new values, grey are my computed targets based on CEC and idealized ratios of other things. Orange are the tableized old test results. 4/21 being the first soil test - we’ve come a long way from that, 6/10 should read 6/11 and those are my most recent results.

My thoughts here are to add P using the cavern culture or bird guano, I have both and they are numerically similar. About 500g of one or the other. Maybe a mix of 50/50. DIVERSITY :rofl: Then 200g of gypsum for 50ppm of sultate to pull some more Na out, maybe some excess K. Blood meal and feather meal to make a balanced release N dry ammendment. I’ll mix that up and top-dress each 50 gallon. Then, I’ll mix up a few buckets of feed water I’ll distribute to each - total of 500mL of the new GEM Fish Hydrolysate and 225mL of Alaska Fish. Boom. Should be balanced, diverse N-P with some of my micros and I’ll be providing the liquid fish products for immediate consumption.

Interestingly, at least to me, I’ll be putting about a cup of dry ammendment in each 50 gallon pot. The Build-A-Soil Craft Blend instructions are to top dress each plant at a rate of a cup per month. So there’s some annecdotal corroboration to my strategy there. Those things have really been growing a bit over a month and half, so that seems about right. My calculations are independently arriving at very similar levels. FRIGGIN SWEET. :nerd_face: :sunglasses:

In conclusion, I don’t think I was wrong noting the plants slightly slowing, I’m speculating perhaps they are having a hard time getting N as easily as they’d like or had become accustomed to, especially this last week. Probably just early enough as to not notice visible deficiencies yet. This test reflects soil samples taken 6/11, about 2 weeks ago.

Any thoughts?

Paging @Dirt_Wizard @noknees @MissinBissin to test their patience reading my mumblings and potentially avert catastrophe

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