- Thread starter
- #11
Ridgerunner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2009
- Messages
- 8,231
- Reaction score
- 10,070
- Points
- 397
- Location
- Southeast Louisiana Zone 9A
@so lucky I was waiting to see if @MontyJ would answer. He’d do a better job than me and I’ll probably get something wrong. But still, I'll give the way I understand it. Maybe Monty or someone else will correct me.
The SO4-S is a measure of available sulfur in the soil in a form the plant can use. Sulfur is a critical nutrient.
CEC is about chemistry, the periodic table and how many electrons are circling the atom nucleus. If that doesn’t scare you I don’t know what will. I was proud of my 3 C’s in four college chemistry courses. When I didn’t take chemistry I often had straight A’s in engineering.
CEC is Cation Exchange Capacity and is tied to the pH. It’s a measure of how well the soil holds on to certain nutrients. Clay is highly charged chemically and does a real good job of holding on to the nutrients and has a high CEC. That’s also why it bakes as hard as a brick. Those charges really bond together on a molecular level. Sand is pretty much chemically inert and will allow those nutrients to escape so it has a low CEC. Pure sand stays loose. It does not form those molecular bonds. The plants can grab those nutrients pretty quickly but water can also leech them out fairly quickly.
My original pH was too low but that is the natural state of my soil and where it will want to return. I’ve brought it a little too high, but because I have a low CEC it will return to a lower pH a lot faster than if I had a high CEC. That’s part of why I’m not too worried about my high pH. It won’t last.
This is about making the nutrients available to the plants. It’s done by the electronic charges being able to access the nutrients they need. For example, if the soil has a lot of aluminum in it, the aluminum would tie up a lot of the chemical space for the bonds needed so aluminum in the soil would make the soil less fertile, not necessarily because the other nutrients aren’t there but because the plant can’t use them.
The soil is a system and it’s about getting that system in balance.
The SO4-S is a measure of available sulfur in the soil in a form the plant can use. Sulfur is a critical nutrient.
CEC is about chemistry, the periodic table and how many electrons are circling the atom nucleus. If that doesn’t scare you I don’t know what will. I was proud of my 3 C’s in four college chemistry courses. When I didn’t take chemistry I often had straight A’s in engineering.
CEC is Cation Exchange Capacity and is tied to the pH. It’s a measure of how well the soil holds on to certain nutrients. Clay is highly charged chemically and does a real good job of holding on to the nutrients and has a high CEC. That’s also why it bakes as hard as a brick. Those charges really bond together on a molecular level. Sand is pretty much chemically inert and will allow those nutrients to escape so it has a low CEC. Pure sand stays loose. It does not form those molecular bonds. The plants can grab those nutrients pretty quickly but water can also leech them out fairly quickly.
My original pH was too low but that is the natural state of my soil and where it will want to return. I’ve brought it a little too high, but because I have a low CEC it will return to a lower pH a lot faster than if I had a high CEC. That’s part of why I’m not too worried about my high pH. It won’t last.
This is about making the nutrients available to the plants. It’s done by the electronic charges being able to access the nutrients they need. For example, if the soil has a lot of aluminum in it, the aluminum would tie up a lot of the chemical space for the bonds needed so aluminum in the soil would make the soil less fertile, not necessarily because the other nutrients aren’t there but because the plant can’t use them.
The soil is a system and it’s about getting that system in balance.