[Bmac1]

I hear ya phatty but i dont have the means for such a project. Ive been piecing things together for a while and while it has cost a few bucks, I will be able to make a great mix and ammend it for quite a while moving forward with only having to purchase a thing or two here and there.

[growingcrazy]

By sending in a sample for testing you will save money in the long run on would be wasted amendments. A soil test is the best investment you can put towards soil growing. $61 @ spectrum for a k3 test.

It takes very very little nutrition to grow plants. We are talking A tbl per cuft of amendments, not cups like we have become accustomed to in the Organic soil forum...

I have 3 batches of soil, one flowering, one vegging and one in limbo... The batch in limbo gets a test as soon as flowering ends. Once the results are back the soil is amended and then sits another month before it goes into the veg room. Just as example...

Big or small, testing saves money and time wasted chasing your tail.

Peace
GC

[St. Phatty]

Originally Posted by Bmac1

I hear ya phatty but i dont have the means for such a project. Ive been piecing things together for a while and while it has cost a few bucks, I will be able to make a great mix and ammend it for quite a while moving forward with only having to purchase a thing or two here and there.

Basically, it takes an outdoors - or a unique situation at a community garden.

I did manage to make some decent worm castings while living in an apartment.

Just put my banana peels and orange peels in buckets till they were half full, then mixed in leaves etc., got it wet, put in some redworms.

It made decent worm castings and it was messy.

I wonder how many of us indoor growers have Shop Vacs.

[stewart169]

Originally Posted by Bmac1

Are you in Canada Stewart? Id be interested in looking into testing if it didnt cost an arm and a leg. Any specific tests I am looking for or just a generalnsoil test?

I just sent a sample last week to spectrum analytic from the recommendation of several growers in the slownickle thread. $51 for the K3 is recommended. They are in Ohio. Waiting for results.

[Bmac1]

Ill have to look into the options I have here. Seems to be a couple fairly close.

[dank.frank]

Part of the problem with soil testing is PPM is a measurement that is based on instant availability to the plant. These soil tests were all developed with the usage of agronomic applications in mind, meaning the usage of chemically derived salts in an already plant available ionic solution. Organic soil systems don't work this way. When you dissolve in an organic acid to get totals, you don't take into accommodation bio-availability and the time frames it takes to convert raw materials into proper ionic forms. There is no soil testing methodology that accounts for this difference.

I have been told by many different testing agencies, with ppm numbers running literally 5-6x their suggested ideal ranges, that NOTHING could possibly grow in that soil. That the roots would burn. I know this to be completely false because I've grown stuff in the soil, 100% water only and had excellent results. Not only that, plants enter senescence as they should in the time frames I'd expect them to based on genetics.

There is no "wasted" amendments in an organic soil. Root exudates control bacterial and fungal colonies and are the instruction sets that literally tell the life in the rhizosphere exactly what is needed and exactly when it is needed and what to convert. While this is a gross simplification of a very elaborate series of processes, it is accurate. If all the proper nutritional elements are available, the plant will get what it needs.

The only real exception of this is plant mobile elements. The soil can be short on these and the plant will self-immolate to make these adjustments.

If you have a high CEC, then you aren't really at risk for much leaching as there are adequate cations in place to hold the proper chemical bonds. If you aren't watering to run off, then there is zero leaching of plant available ionic salts in the first place.

In my opinion, the only real purpose of a soil test is to check CEC, organic matter content, and base saturation % of the necessary cations. It really doesn't matter if you have too much or not enough of something because these items are all about a ratio in respect to one another. Knowing if you have available exchange sites in the soil tells you if you need more nutrition or not.

All that aside, if you can't READ THE PLANT for nutritional diagnosis, a soil test isn't going to help you. The plant itself is the best metric we will ever have.



dank.Frank

[Bmac1]

You must have typed this as i was typing a pm to you. Lol, funny coincidence.

[dank.frank]

Yep. LOL. Gave you some more specific information in the PM.



dank.Frank

[fizz]

I feel like the bacteria and fungi in a live mix is just as important if not more important than anything else. Biosolids are a good example of this.

[growingcrazy]

Dank: If you have a grower that knows how to read plants and add back to the soil very slowly only what that plants have used(never happens), testing isn't as important.

It is impossible to know the soil balance without a test. Period. If you add back that 1/2 cup of amendments every couple rounds your setting yourself up for failure eventually.

You use the test as a scale in your own little micro-universe. Use the numbers, round after round, to know what levels you started at and what the nutrient draw down was. The numbers are just a scale for your observation.

Kind of like building an engine without precision measuring equipment, ie calipers, mics etc. You may get it to run, but for how long and at what % of optimum performance...

Amendments last a lot longer in the bag waiting to be mixed than in the soil being made available and then washed out the bottom of the container.