It is hard to be upset about having too much of a good thing. : )

How high was your OM? Above 10? Above 15? Above 20? You can't leave me hanging and wondering how high "real high" is. LOL As much amending as you do though, I'm not surprised your nutrient levels are high.

How high is your pH? Mine was at 8.0 to 8.2 in the beginning, but now it tests between 6.8 and 7.2.

Do you ever have years of heavy rainfall that can flush excess nutrients out of your soil, or would you have to irrigate to make that happen? It looks like you have enough N to grow a really, really fabulous corn crop!

I guess you're off the hook for amending soil this fall.....so, guess that leaves you time to plow up more ground and enlarge the garden.

Do you know whose soil your test reminds me of? GoneFishin's! He always added so much manure and stable straw and stuff to his that I bet his N-P-K ran high too....and don't you remember how green his garden always was? It's not a bad thing to be compared to Bill. : )

Dawn

On OM I guess they use a different scale and maybe test than the extension service. I know my OM reading last year abovr 20. This test shows 2.15 on the main garden which he call a favorable medium reading. He suggests straw mulches. He also said this test determines only the well decomposed available OM and not that I just turned under which should raise the reading. And also a soil inoculant. He suggested a few different brands he feels are good products.
On micronutrients(Zn-Fe-Mn-Cu)-" In the main garden " all tested extremely high. In the new tomato patch Manganese and Copper tested medium with the rest extremely high. Main garden Zn-11.02, Fe-12.11, Mn-10.09, Cu-1.39
PH ran 7.5-7.9 Which surprised me. Just shows the test kits you buy at the garden centers aren't accurate. He does say the reading shouldn't be used as an absolute recommendation as it is a very nebulous measurement at best-too many factors influence a soil PH test measurement for it too be a reliable representation of natural soil PH in the field that affects root growth. He suggested adding sulphur at least 3 times and a cup to each hole when transplanting along with a cup of bone meal. He said to mix the two kinds of sulphur when adding to the hole. One give immediate help and the other is slower breaking down so helps later in the season.
Calcium was high. Said the sulphur and a soil inoculant and humus would help that.
N was 372 main garden, P was 256 and K was 343.
Total soluble salts was high enough to cause some problems. He suggested heavy watering. I'm hoping the moisture we've received and hopefully will continue to receive will flush it out some. I've read and he agreed you see more build up during drought years as there is no water to leach the salts out. I'm thinking after I get it ready for spring planting using the soaker hoses and really soaking it good for maybe 12 hours at a time before moving it. That should move them out some as wet as we are already.
Described the soil as sandy loam with good internal drainage and also water holding capacity and cation exchange capacity. - about (10-20).

When I read it I was at first a little concerned. The main issue to work on is the soluble salts and a return to normal rainfall will help as much as anything. I remeber 5 years ago after we received the 6 plus inches in 2 1/2 hours the garden did better overall for two years. So just need another toad strangler.

He was some what surprised at how well I said theings produced overall with the high N levels. He said many factors play into it and overall my soil is in good shape.
I think back to what my Dad alwasys said about animals being starved or overfed. He said whether they starve to death or are killed with love they are still dead. And in this case I guess I did it with love. hehe. Jay

I don't understand the scale they're using for OM, but if yours has been over 20 in the past, that's outstanding (in my mind) even if they say it is too high. It wouldn't surprise me if your OM goes higher than 20 this year because I don't think you had enough moisture this year to break down everything you've added in the last year. (When we first started here, our OM was ZERO...nothing but clay...no sand...no silt.....you could make clay pots from the soil I started with). I dream of an OM in the 15-20 range, but I do try to keep mine in the 10-15 range, although a really wet year makes it drop.....I guess in a really wet year, OM might break down too quickly or maybe the small particles of OM leach out of the soil when we get 9" or 12" of rain in one day, which happens about every other year. You need one of our heavy rain storms to leach some stuff out of your soil.

Do you mean that he wants you to apply an innoculant to your entire garden? I've only used innoculants in terms of coating beans or peas before planting them, so I don't know a lot about innoculant use on a larger scale. Do you buy innoculant for that purpose in a big bag at a farm store? I'm so confused on this point.

Your high pH doesn't surprise me, except....with your OM being so high, I would have thought the pH would be in the low 7s. On the other hand, my water tests at 8.2 and my soil (especially the unimproved soil) is all over the place in the high 7s and low to mid-8s depending on where you dig it up from, so I understand having high pH. In the veggie garden, I try to keep it close to neutral, but that is really even harder than it sounds because it just inches its way back up constantly. What would we do without sulphur? LOL

I'm guessing the total soluable salts wouldn't be as high if you averaged rainfall in the 30-35" range (sounds like a dream, doesn't it?) and had some leaching help in that area. I wish we could send you one of our toad strangler rains. Our second or third year here, we had a big Tstorm dump 5" of rain in about 2 hours and flash flooding ensued. At the time, I was astonished and couldn't imagine a heavier rainfall....until we subsequently recorded 7", 9" and 12.4" in a single day in various years. However, having one big rainfall doesn't make up for going 3 or 4 months with virtually no rain, but on the other hand it does help clean the soil of soluable salts.

I think your soil test results are really, really wonderful and they show that you've worked really hard to get your OM levels up and have a great CEC, great drainage and great water-holding capacity (when there is water to hold). When that many things are right, it is harder to be worried about high nutrient levels because they are fairly easy to fix.

I think your garden produced so well because you watch your plant foliage careully for signs of nutrient deficiencies and feed them accordingly. Even though your N tested high, you got great fruiting so I wonder if high N is not as much of a problem if P and K are also high? That would be my best guess, that high N-P-K in unison allow a garden to produce well whereas high N but low P and K might give you too much foliage and not enough flowers or fruit.

I still think if I had your soil test results, I'd be feeling pretty good....you know what your soil's imbalances are now and you know what to do to counter that. Your soil is in great shape overall, and I can't help thinking your high OM offsets the high calcium and high soluable salts to a certain extent. You know how I love OM---I think that when your soil's OM is high it can counteract all kinds of other issues.

I suppose lowering your calcium will be the toughest challenge if the soil and water in your corner of SW Kansas tend to run high in terms of pH and calcium in general. I know that the things I do to lower pH are 'temporary' and if I slack off even one year, my pH inches back up.

You are unique in that you are 'loving your plants to death' with nutrition (and I use the term 'to death' loosely because your plants mostly lived and produced just fine)....whereas most people 'love their plants to death' with water. LOL

Congrats on the great soil test results....even the things that seem like issues are easy to fix with his recommendations. You already have the important things right.....great drainage....great cation exchange capacity....great OM (if, hee hee, a bit high)....even great nutrient loads even though they are testing high. I can't help thinking all your nutrient numbers are high merely because of low rainfall these last few years. If you'd had 49" of rain there this year there like we've had here (the highest annual rainfall we've had since moving here in '99), I bet your N-P-K would be significantly lower and so would your soluable salts. So, looking at it that way, you didn't add too much of anything to your soil....Mother Nature just forgot to come along and pour down a good hard rain on it once or twice a month.

You can always use your manure and grass clippings on newly broken ground since you can't put them into the existing garden....or you can use them in a compost pile.

I'm not crazy about straw mulch...it doesn't pack down enough here and it blows around a lot unless we're having oodles of rain. I am wondering if you'll have that problem with straw mulch next year since you have such wild winds there?

One more thing, in much of Texas in recent years, literally everyone is testing high in P and K and lots of folks are only applying nitrogen year in and year out, so it doesn't surprise me that your P & K are high too...I think that high P & K tends to be more common in our part of the country than previously believed.

Dawn

He recommended a soil inoculant. or a compost tea. Some of the ones he mentions are Impact, Super Bio, Medina and several others. I have done a little research on them so far. Also can use what they call activators. He says adding these will help the salt leaching. I will let you know after I learn more about some of these products. I haven't heard back from a few yet. Some I think you can apply around the roots like I did the MycoGrow this summer. And others seem to be a whole garden treatment.

I have the same troubles with straw mulch as you do. I will use some dried out grass clippings. At least I can keep them in place better. Usually by summer I can keep straw down better especially if we get a little rain. I'm going to add tree leaves also and till them in shallow.

I'm like you and think that the other levels being so high may of balanced things out. Even when we started getting rains we missed the big fast ones. A couple of those would really help me. Especially with the way I have the soil worked. And I know they are coming just not when. I'm going ot soak the garlic and shallot area good and may move on across the garden.

Overall I know it isn't too bad by the overall plant health this year. And I know where I'm at and what to add and not to add to make it even better. Without a guide line you are shooting in the dark. Jay

Congrats on more great soil test results! You have turned that sand into some fine, biologically healthy soil....and you know what I mean. There is dirt and then there is soil and you have developed fine soil in your garden area.

I am excited to here the news about your cold frame. Bill P. would be so proud. I look forward to seeing how the hotbed works out for you.

We are expecting to turn pretty cold here in the next few days, so I assume that means y'all are going to be really, really cold.

I have pulled out some of the plants that froze last week, but a lot of my beds' companion plants that are herbs and flowers haven't died back to the ground yet, so I haven't done much else.

There have been a lot of deer hunters and a lot of shooting on the land that lies west and also north of us, so I've been staying inside to avoid being shot by a stray bullet. I'll be glad when hunting season is over.

Dawn