The chemicals leach away within a few days especially with snow and/or heavy rain. It's the damage they leave behind that you've been left to deal with. The salts kill off the microbes and they have to be given time to regroup and reproduce.

With your addition of soil amendments (in this case the CGM) you are feeding them and they should recover in relatively short order. Of course a lot has to do with what's there to begin with. The only way to know for sure what's in your soil is to have a relatively expensive test done that I personally didn't find neccessary barring anymore soil related problems (knock on wood).

Like I've mentioned before: you're in a unique situation. New construction, new topsoil, fresh sod, not a lot of damage done by years of salt being dumped in your lawn. Of course the topsoil you've got could have been tainted, but here in Illinois they usually use good ol' farmsoil that's got most of the right stuff to get us started.

If your concerned about what's going on down there and if you've got what you need in the soil you can topdress with GOOD compost (not all compost are created equal) or brew up a batch of aerated compost tea.

Greenjeans

Yeah, I saw on the other thread about the compost tea. But I couldn't visualize what it is. I don't know how it is made and how it is applied. What benefit does the soil get from it? Can you tell me more about it?

You've helped me so much! :) See you on Saturday.

Here's a quote from Wikipedia's entry on DDT..."DDT is a persistent organic pollutant with a reported half life of between 2-15 years, and is immobile in most soils." That means that if 100 pounds of DDT was applied to your soil in 1950, there might still be 6 pounds left. There are also some herbicides in recent use that would still persist in the soil. As far as chemical fertilizers, I'm not aware of any that are persistent.

This, by the way, is why it's so hard to do good organic agriculture research - there's no virgin ground left.

Compost tea is a method of extracting the beneficial microbes from compost, feeding them enough to multiply them by 1000x, and spraying it on your plants. True compost tea is made with great compost and a continual air supply during the 24 hour brewing period. Here's a link to a pretty good home made tea maker.

Actually, I have read that last night. It is awesome. And I can't wait to try it.

What I'm looking for now is where to buy an affordable foliar spray. A used working one would be fine. Gerry, from another organic forum told me that I should core aerate my soil so I can have hole and that ACT can go deeply. So, for my lawn, am I correct that I should spray the ACT as close as 2" to the soil?

v1rtu0s1ty,

Good news! You're hooked on organics!!

The distance from the ground it's sprayed won't matter. It will land in the same place and Gerry's suggestion of core aeration was more for the placement of mycorhizal fungi (or VAM) in the root zone. When VAM spores are mixed with the tea it has to be introduced to the root zone for it work. The other microbes will find their home in the soil on their own. They're very mobile.

Greenjeans

That VAM made me so curious again. :D Hehehe. What is the easiest way to grow VAM?