large-ish scale outdoor---building living soil

oct · Mar 25, 2016

I'm going to plant a spring time cover crop and get my biology active. My local feed and farm store sells a pretty awesome pre-mixed bag of clover, peas, vetch, oats, etc..

What I'm undecided on, terminate the cover crop by turning it under before planting, or leaving it and letting it grow right along with my plants.

Obviously this ain't my first rodeo, but I'm really starting to focus and learn more about biology, minerals, foliars, soil and plant testing...I figured I could get more knowledge posting here vs. the outdoor section. Heres a shot of my garden before prep begins!

xmobotx · Mar 26, 2016

i like to let it grow along ~barring that, i would either cut it or mulch it {as opposed to terminate by till}

oct · Mar 26, 2016

Thanks xmobotx. I did a poor job at keeping biology active throughout the offseason and still have a really dense root mass. I think I'm gonna till thoroughly, amend according to my test that'll come next week, plant a cover, and then plant directly into that (without killing it)...I usually do a straw mulch with a few food sources layered underneath. I'll probably roll with a half living/half normal mulch this summer.

I've got a pretty cool half and half type mulch going on in my indoor atm.

I just started learning how biology from the different food sources we put in our soil, aren't even really that active unless there's roots exuding concurrently.

I'll be posting my test results here. I'm still learning and could use some guidance. Veteran soil geeks, your advice is greatly appreciated!

oct · Mar 30, 2016

Soil

Soil

Soil test

oct · Mar 30, 2016

Sat paste

Sat paste

Sat paste

oct · Mar 30, 2016

Water

Water

Water

MileHighGlass · Mar 30, 2016

I would let it grow right along. It will die back as your plant gets larger and shades the cover crop.

I don't use soil tests anymore so I'm no good with that.

oct · Mar 30, 2016

Thanks for your input milehigh

This is actually my first time getting tests done. Theres about 120 yards of soil in my garden that I'll be using this year. The original soil was 6 years old and then I brought in another 60 yards when I went from 1 yard beds to 2 yard beds a few years back. The original 6 year and 2 year old soil I blended together, added my usual amendments, and had awesome seasons out of it.

I just always amended by feel before this. Figured it was probably time to get something on paper though. The only time I really had any problems is when I decided to do more plants last year. I bought some 2 yard smarties and another 25 yards of a local companys "premium blend" which fuckin sucked...luckily I only put 12 plants in that shit and they weren't even really part of my main garden. I feel sorry for the poor dudes who used that stuff for their entire grow. I saw some shitty plants at another location that we're in that same mix..they'd bought 120 yards. Just seeing that stuff like that could happen kinda scared me and I started learning a lot more about soil.

milkyjoe · Mar 30, 2016

So imo a saturated paste test on cold soil is pretty useless. Biology is dormant until the soil is 50 degrees or so.

With the hardness of your water it needs to be treated with an acid or bicarbs are going to tie up ions making them unavailable to the plants.

Your soil test looks good except S and I would also correct the Ca (1.5 lbs gypsum per yard of dirt will do it) and micros.

The other issue will be N. I know you are in the organic soil section but using ammonium sulfate will improve your S situation while building N.

And last you definitely want a microbe program for the grow. Microbemans program would work great. A combo of Tainio/AEA (Sea Shield, Rejuvenate, Spectrum).

I like that you have that much Si and don't have high K. You should be able to go full season with no bug/disease problems.

Did the give you a C:N ratio? If not you could call them, if they measured organic N they could do the calc.

edit...if you want to go through the math we can do it in the thread.

oct · Mar 30, 2016

Thanks a lot Joe. Super helpful. I got all the tests that the guy who does soil consulting in my area told me to get after he came and visited.

Could you elaborate and little more on how to treat my water? Like what products I'd use to do it and how? I'm already cooking up ways for a big reservoir I can treat after you mentioning that. I wanna do everything right this season.

Ammonium sulfate sounds good to me. How much do you recommend?

I'll call logan right now to see if they could help with the C:N ratio

Edit: Just got off the phone with Logans. It was $18 bucks. They're sending that info over right now.

oct · Mar 30, 2016

Yeah man lets do it all here. I'm sure other people could benefit from the info as well. I'm waiting for the email for C:N.

I'll post it once it comes in.

I'm about to head up the big feed and farm store 4 hours from my house and making a list of what I need. They carry a vast majority of amendments. I'll grab whatever you tell me.

orechron · Mar 31, 2016

Milky what are your thoughts on the gypsums effect on Mg and K in that his soil? Being that the others are in the low range is there a risk of further displacement?

Overall thats a great test oct. Boron can come up to 2ppm, Mn 50ppm, Cu 5ppm, and Mo/Co 1ppm? Question mark on the last two because I haven't seen anything concrete on what ideal levels are. I'm getting them up to 1ppm in my indoor soil currently.

I would also get K up to 5% saturation. The best soil for me last year was stuff that was slightly oversaturated (72% Ca, 12% Mg, 6% K). Sap pH was high initially but it drops later in the season during bloom. I lost 1%< to botrytis in that soil and the plants were wet almost every day between 9/20-10/24. One other route you can go is something like neem meal or other seed meals that have K&N.

For bicarbs in the water sulfuric acid will decompose them and help your low S issue. One other product is called N-pHuric acid which is a sulfuric urea mixture that is less dangerous to handle than straight sulphuric. Very little of this stuff is needed to treat water.

milkyjoe · Mar 31, 2016

orech good question on the S. Here is how I look at it: a) with a pH of 6.2 there is plenty of room on the cec sites and a good bit of organic matter to hold sulfate. So it ionizes I think both the Ca and SO4 will find homes to stick on. If you get a recommend from Tainio and pH is below 6.4 they use Kso4 and MgSO4. b) the S is only 10 ppm which is not high enough to convert Nitrates to proteins in the plant so I definitely want to get S up for plant health. Normally I don't see low S...but here it is so I figure deal with it

The other thing to watch early on is don't water to runoff. Make sure the entire root ball area stays damp but no need to overdo it and encourage leaching.

On the oversaturating slightly...that is an option and it works if you don't leach. And yea getting K up to 5% is also a good idea...and I would use K2SO4 for that.

I have become a fan of starter fertilizers though. Making sure the root ball when I am transplanting has plenty of nutes until the roots grow out into the new soil and start working. So at transplant and probably a week later I water the rootball with a fairly balanced mix. And I have taken to using HyperCaP for this to really get things started fast. But again...not organic

I personally don't care one bit if something is labeled organic or not. NaNitrate is organic, CaNitrate is not. Does that make a bit of sense...not to me. I simply ask myself is this going to hurt my microbes. Granted the Pacid in hypercap can be harsh but in these high P soils I don't think you get myco infection anyway so I go ahead and get the roots started as fast as I can.

This strategy slightly reduces the need to oversaturate the cec sites

Anyways, we can figure it both ways and then decide.

orech...do you dry soil out and get weights to do the micro calcs? My approach is sneak up on it over a few grows and supplement with foliar until I get there.

oct...did you hear from Logan? How hard would it be to completely till those beds?

oct · Apr 1, 2016

I haven't heard back.

I can till the whole beds no prob. I've got a tiller attachment for the highest powered weed wacker from stihl...it works so good it seems like it was made for my beds.

milkyjoe · Apr 1, 2016

Cool. So I will try to do the calcs tomorrow or Sat. Once I post them maybe Orech can jump in and argue.

oct · Apr 1, 2016

Wow. Badass. I'm down to roll with whatever, "organic" or not. If you think somethings good, I'll add it. I'm thankful I didn't start fooling around with my soil before I sent that test in and also thankful it seems like I'm starting with a decent base to work from...just some old dirt I threw whatever at the last 5 years.

I never knew my water was off all this time either. Very happy that got tested also.

I'll throw that other info up asap once logans get back to me.

HUGE · Apr 1, 2016

tagged in. im loving the discourse.

orechron · Apr 1, 2016

milkyjoe said:
orech good question on the S. Here is how I look at it: a) with a pH of 6.2 there is plenty of room on the cec sites and a good bit of organic matter to hold sulfate. So it ionizes I think both the Ca and SO4 will find homes to stick on. If you get a recommend from Tainio and pH is below 6.4 they use Kso4 and MgSO4. b) the S is only 10 ppm which is not high enough to convert Nitrates to proteins in the plant so I definitely want to get S up for plant health. Normally I don't see low S...but here it is so I figure deal with it

That makes sense. I've seen some displacement with gypsum inside with that last indoor round but there was runoff often. From what I've seen, even with high organic matter its hard to hold enough S if there is overwatering. I've seen it drop from 70-80ppm back down to 10 in a month in 50% organic matter media.

The other thing to watch early on is don't water to runoff. Make sure the entire root ball area stays damp but no need to overdo it and encourage leaching.

On the oversaturating slightly...that is an option and it works if you don't leach. And yea getting K up to 5% is also a good idea...and I would use K2SO4 for that.

I have become a fan of starter fertilizers though. Making sure the root ball when I am transplanting has plenty of nutes until the roots grow out into the new soil and start working. So at transplant and probably a week later I water the rootball with a fairly balanced mix. And I have taken to using HyperCaP for this to really get things started fast. But again...not organic

This is something I botched last year. My starts outside took a hit because I got lazy and counted on them moving into full term soil faster.

I personally don't care one bit if something is labeled organic or not. NaNitrate is organic, CaNitrate is not. Does that make a bit of sense...not to me. I simply ask myself is this going to hurt my microbes. Granted the Pacid in hypercap can be harsh but in these high P soils I don't think you get myco infection anyway so I go ahead and get the roots started as fast as I can.

This strategy slightly reduces the need to oversaturate the cec sites

Anyways, we can figure it both ways and then decide.

orech...do you dry soil out and get weights to do the micro calcs? My approach is sneak up on it over a few grows and supplement with foliar until I get there.

For the light indoor stuff but not in the field. I've only used native soil so far outside, cutting in maybe 5% peat last year to raise o matter. I assumed it was close enough to Logan's standard in that case.

oct...did you hear from Logan? How hard would it be to completely till those beds?

On the micros what I've done recently indoors was add weekly doses of the sulfates as a drench. You can do it with micropak if all are low but thats expensive and not variable. Buying them in sulfate form off amazon is good then mix into a humic product. You have to be careful though, I'm talking 100 gallons for example with 1 cup humacarb, 6g Mn, 4g Zn, 1g Cu, etc.

milkyjoe · Apr 1, 2016

So lets start with P with yours being much better than a lot mixes at 324 lbs per acre.

First some explanations. An acre furrow slice is assumed to be an acre 6 inches deep and weighing 2,000,000 lbs. So there are 807 yards of dirt in an acre furrow slice. And one pound per acre is 1/2 ppm (or 2 lbs per acre is 1 ppm)

Your P2O5 is reported as 324 lbs per acre or dividing that by 2 you have 162 ppm. Further P2O5 is 44% P (the rest is oxygen). So 0.44 x 162 = 71 ppm P.

That may be low enough to allow you to infect your roots with myco (amf) fungi which I feel would be a very beneficial thing to do. I would give it a shot.

That means as part of your starter fert you will add myco fungi. So Mycogenesis (which also contains the same bacteria as Spectrum) from Tainio, Bio Coat Gold from AEA (it is sold as a seed starter but it is mostly myco fungi) or tons of other stuff out there.

It also means we don't want to use HyperCaP in the starter as the Pacid itself would be hard on the mycos putting them into dormancy until the plant took up the P from the acid.

In my pots that have double this P I have never been able to get the myco to infect my roots as seen by the lack of dreadlock roots when I pull them up immediately on cutting. So what I have chosen to do this year is use Trichoderma (Root Shield) instead of myco fungi. The two do not play well together so one or the other...btw Great White combines the two, how does that work?

Anyways, I would give myco a shot this yr and see if you get dreads. If not next yr you can switch to trichoderma.

edit...so you are gonna 99 x 2 yards= 198 yards of dirt. 198/807 = .245 acre furrow slices of dirt. This will make it easy when we start calculating how much AEA product to use as they use weight per acre for applications.

oct · Apr 1, 2016

I hope I didn't mess up your math Joe, but I'll be working with 104 yards of dirt this year. New Plant regulations. 52 plants, each with a 2 yard box.

Heres the C:N test

large-ish scale outdoor---building living soil

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