Tested my soil after planting. Now what can I safely change?

[brad]

Smiles, those were my thoughts exactly. So here are the inputs we made today (~2000 sq ft garden):

Hydrated lime: 150lbs
0-45-0 Phosphate: 15lbs
10-10-10: 20lbs (a week ago, after the soil samples were pulled)

Plus we side-dressed the corn today with some 36-0-0 (which we would have done regardless).

I'll post updates as we (hopefully) see results over the next few weeks. We still plan to do much more in the fall to further correct pH & other imbalances, but for now I think we're going to stick with this and see what happens (although I'm sure we'll drop in some 10-10-10 for good measure once in awhile).

Thank you all for your valuable input.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

150 lb. of lime does not sound like very much. But the powdered kind is usually absorbed into the soil quickly so 150 lb. could be correct. We use limestone granules (crushed rock) around here by the truckloads.

 

[brad]

You should see the garden - it looks like it snowed about 2" on it!

The recommendation was for 250lbs for our ~2000 sq ft area, but I didn't really want to do it all at once so I opted for just over half of that for this first attempt. The garden is on somewhat of a slope and I didn't want the lime to just runoff down the hill, so we will do the lime in two separate applications.

 

[journey11]

Let us know how it turns out for this season!

 

[seedcorn]

You did well by going lite on the hydrated lime, it's caustic.

Best way to add P and micro's is foliar feed. There are many excellent products sold by your local fertilizer plants. One gallon will do many gardens.

If you get good flowering and fruit set, you're in good shape on P. Soils tests are good but they will vary depending on the spot used, time of year, sampling depth. Best way to get a soil sample (especially if you want to see how it improves through time) is take it same time of year and take several samples, mix them in a bucket and pull your sample. Hopefully your soil is all the same type, otherwise best to take a sample from each type.

 

[MuranoFarms]

What about wood ash? Could you scatter that around in the garden now? First rain would melt it right in.

 

[Huntet02]

Hi brad and welcome to the forums.

First of all, don't panic. Relax and enjoy the learning experience with your garden. Everyone here has had similar discoveries through the years and it's certainly not the end of the world to have soil condition issues at first. It may be too late to bring the acidic condition down in your entire garden for this growing season. But if you plan to make several plantings as the season goes along you can amend each area of the garden just before you plant the new stuff. Lime takes a little while to do it's job but you can only do what you can do.

Sure some of your existing plants would maybe do better if you had done your amending last fall or during January or February but don't beat yourself up over it. Enjoy what you have and learn from it.

Something that I have learned over the past 40 years of home gardening is that it's hard to apply too much organic material to your soil. A few years ago I put in a little garden plot that I made just for experiments. It's about 30 ft. x 50 ft. During my efforts to turn yucky blue clay into a garden my neighbor was harvesting 1200 acres of feed corn. I asked if I could have some of the "trash" from the combine as it was blown out of the chute. He said that he was going to blow some into his dump truck to use in his veggie garden and that he would bring me a load. Well, he sure brought me a load alright. I was not home when he came over so he spread the powdered corn stalks 8" deep over my entire plot. Wow! That fall I plowed it under and the following spring I tilled it in some more. The next year we did it again. That's 16" of ground up corn stalks and leaves. I also put 4 tons of lime on the plot that second year. To make a long story short . . . this is one of my best veggie plots now even though the soil was absolutely terrible when I started 6 years ago. Every fall I add another layer of organic material (mostly old compost with lots of lawn and cow manure nowadays). I'm convinced that lots of organic material is a key to good soil.

Sorry for the long post but you said that you're new to gardening and I thought you could learn from my experience with my experimental plot. Just relax and enjoy your garden.

***Glad you shared this I'm knee deep in clay too (brand new to gardening) and live across from a dairy farmer who also grows feeder corn, you just gave me a great idea.....so glad you shared I never thought to ask but the stalks are always blowing into my yard why not make use of them...thanks again for sharing.....[/img][/i]