Thanks all. Should I spread some lime on the area? If so, at what point?
Also we have lots of rabbit and goat droppings. Are both good for fertilizer?
Research the theory of NPK. Its not old. It coincidently coincided with helping chemical companies relabel war chemicals....
The nitrogen requirements of plants is nearly on par with some micronutrients. Your calcium and your phosphate requirements completely dwarf, and sadly are most ignored.
One thing you need to always remember about manure. Its everything the animal got too much of, wasn't supposed to get, etc. I have done analysis on many manures. Ususally they are all very high in sulfur, salt and aluminum. In many cases it was higher in sodium than NO2 or NH3. You don't need manure unless you know you need nitrogen. Even then is best composted firsted to start the nitrogen cycle. Specifically then, you need to know if you are low in NO3 nitrate (vegetative) or NH4 ammonical (flowering) nitrogen. You google the capability of worm/biology in the soil in the nitrogen cycle you will quickly find out most if not all nitrogen sources are causing more problem than help. They introduce excesses of sodium, sulfur or aluminum. God forbid urea is used.
If you get a test done with a local Ag extension office or any garden variety lab. You need to understand they are doing a HCL test. HCL acid breaks down the entire sample and tells you everything that is there. Not if it is available (lockup, incorrect ionic charge, etc). Additionally the HCL breaks down a portion of the sample, and some nutrients get chemically micronized below the detection limits. To offset this very big problem, some states and commercial farms will use citrc acid testing to give a light acid test reading. There are other more targeted methods too. Essentially, you need to know more than just what is there - you need to know what is available. You can have sufficient calcium, but if the pH is too high because the salts are too high - your plants WILL be calcium deficient. If you moly is zero, it will inhibit nitrogen uptake no matter how much nitrogen you have in the soil.
in over 12 years of reading these tests. I can tell you, lime / dolomite / gypsum are the worst calcium choices that can be made. Lime is Ca2+. Its ionically positive, and the plant requires negative. Now your lime has to undergo lengthy CEC exchange to become available. This is why the idoicy of selling sea salt for the field can happen, the negative salt helps to give that Calcium a rise in availability and your first cutting shoots up in veg growth. Then the problem of too much salt sets in, and you are now worse off. Here come the pests. Too much salt equals a rise in plant sap ph which rings the dinner bell for pests. Too much sulfur lowers the plant sap ph and here comes the disease. Aluminum can mimic every problem, its the next plague in agriculture. One of the biggest side effects of Aluminum is abortion of the fruit. Dolomite is a magnesium product, not calcium product. Gypsum is a sulfur product, not a calcium product. For every input you use, you need to consider what else is in it - and are you going to cause an excess? For example. Your sulfur maximum availability is 2 ppm in the soil. Your long term goal for calcium would be 6,000ppm. Most people come with 500-1500ppm of calcium. If you used gypsum to get there (calcium sulfate), what do you think is going to happen to your sulfur levels? Extreme excess = disease.
If I can summarize. At the end of every year, your check book / receipts should read from greatest to least: Calcium, Phosphate, Silica, Carbon, Potassium, Nitrogen. (this isn't addressing micronutrients or iodine or mag, etc yet)
If you are tending a lawn. Know this. Calcium drives your vegetative growth. Potassium drives your reproduction (flower, seed, fruit). If you put out too much available potassium at the beginning of the year, you make available to the plant sap too much potassium. It hinders your veg growth. Where is the fruit/seed or flower on your lawn? None. Your potassium requirements on a lawn are about one to two ppm (compare that to your iron requirements of 1-2 ppm). Atmosphereic potassium exchange can keep up with a pure veg only crop usually. So adhere to your veg vs flower cycles when amending nutrients.
I would keep on hand:
Aragonite (Negative Charged and carries a lot of nitrifying bacteria)
Calcium Phosphate aka Soft Rock Phosphate
Calcium Silicate (its a silica product, not a ca product)
Carbon - Biochar (low ash)
Be very careful about your Potassium sources. Kelp = high sodium. You can drive your flower cycle with foliar feeding potassium
Nitrogen - Organic Nitrogen (not certified organic, means plant based. Not ammonia or nitrate or urea). This can then be converted to NH4 or NO3 as the soil requires for the nitrogen cycle.
), so thinking 6' tall fencing
) and will give it a shot... how far between the 2 rows of posts? A foot or 2?
