P lb/A 26 is an indication of available Phosphorus, 26 pounds per acre. You have a very good soil pH, which for optimal growth of most plants should be between 6.2 and 6.8. That range is when most of the nutrients in the soil are most available. Adding the organic matter, compost, shredded leaves, etc. is a good idea.
What is the level of humus in your soil?

Hello,
Overall you have decent soil. Your CEC is low and you should probably get that up. CEC is the abiliity of the soil to hold ions of NPK etc. You proably have a soil that is more sandy than clayey (sp?) or an old soil with really broken down types of clay. You have good levels of Ca, which is probably why you have good pH.
Yuma

What your soil test is telling you is that you are in good shape. Your pH is ideal and your bases are in desirable ratios to one another. What you should do then is fertilize based on crop needs. What exactly your CEC is isn't important except to realize that with a low CEC like yours you will need to fertilizer at a lower rate more frequently.

I agree, your main cocern should be to raise the cec. Do this by adding organic matter -- this is a long-term project. Now here's an idea: in addition to yearly compost use a staw mulch - every year - to raise the soil organic matter; staw because it is heavy in potash which you sorely need. I wouldn't use any "bag" fertilzwer, especially 0-46-0, which is far too strong. You need a good source for phosphorus, which you need lots of. Ask around, but how about 1# soft rock phosphate (a natural product) per 100 sq. ft.? Regards, Peter B.

Kimmsr, You have made me feel much better, I thought the test was horrible only because they also have it broken down into a bar graph and that shows way below optimum. They did not give me the % of organic matter, for some reason it is left blank and says it was optional.. Now I do have a question on the leaves. I got a few bags from the town but they are quite decomposed. I was planning on saving them for next spring to start a compost pile but should I add them to some of the perennial gardens now and wait to get fresh ones for next year? The town said they would be getting lots of leaves here in a few weeks..

Yuma, your right on the nose.. I live along the Muskingum River and our soil is very very sandy.. Can I ask what you mean about holding ions?

Thanks,
Amy

To get the potash and Phosphate numbers up anyone have any ideas as to what I can add?? I know Peter mentioned soft rock phosphate any other ideas? I was wondering too where I would look to purchase something like soft rock phosphate?

Thanks everyone for being so helpful,

Amy

Bone meal can help with the Phosphate. Potassium (potash) is a little trickier. My soil test showed low Potassium but way high Phosphate so Now I'm looking for good sources that are higher in Nitrogen and Potassium than they are in Phosphate. The local stores seem to carry Blood meal and bone meal but I'm not finding anything for Potassium. I guess I may need to do some burning, Ashes are a sources of potash.

Your leaves will help with both the Phosphorus and Potash, just get your hands on as much as possible and start to add them, now. Burning any material, as tclynx says is both a waste of time and energy and a source of pollution we do not need. While ash does have the minerals the original material does too so there is no need to burn it to obtain those minerals, and there is no real reason to buy rock phosphate, bone meal, granite dust, etc. since organic matter will add all those and if you can get OM free what could be better.

Hello Amy,
The CEC is the cation exchange capacity of your soil. The ions (lets see if I can get this out simply:) of NPK etc. exist in the soil as charged particles, either negative or positive, and can become attached to clays or organic matter and this process helps provide minerals to the plants and keep minerals locked up and not leaching out of the soil. I would suggest that you get a basic level soils book. If you can go to an Agriculture University website and get to the soils department and see what book they use for the first year soils classes.
Yuma

Kimmsr, I want to thank you for being so patient with me.. So you are saying OM alone can fix my problem? Can I make good OM with just a few items? I can get as much horse manure as I want for free, we live real close to a sale barn. I mentioned living by the corn field and the city giving away free leaves.. will that alone with grass clippings be enough to make a good balance of OM??

Thanks again,
Amy

Read all the FAQs on this forum. I consider them to have much more recent information than any books I've seen. That will give you a modern orientation to organic gardening. It is not all about compost any more. You really don't have to do anything special except fertilize and don't use any chemicals. Sand is your only problem. Organic fertilizer is your solution.

I suggest you go to Peacefull Valley Supply and order their booklet entitled "Understanding your Soil Test". I bought it about 10 years ago and it was well worth the $10. Besides telling you how to read the graphs and numbers on a test, it actually tells you what to use to change the numbers - organically.

Here is a link that might be useful: Peacefull Valley

In your area, as happens up here, shortly you will have readily available a lot of organic matter, tree leaves, a renewable resource that make an excellent soil amendment. Get lots of those since they are available essemntially for free and use them as mulch, to make compost. Use the manurte and the leaves to make compost.

Kimmsr: with the greatest respect, I don't think you are giving entirely good advice here. Obviously, incorporating leaves is an excellent way to increase soil organic matter. In my experience one can increase the percent soil organic matter by about one-tenth of a percentage point a year this way. But I suggest that leaves aren't the way to address the magnesium, potash, and phosphorus shortages.

Consider: the minerals in this soil are out of balance -- too much calcium and too little of the other three. Leaves will provide a balanced mineral diet, which will leave the Ca, Mg, and K (cation)percentages pretty much unchanged -- although they will add a little P (anion). So what is wanted is an UNbalanced application of minerals - along with the leaves - that contains absolutely NO calcium, but amounts of Mg and K -- and I would suggest phosphosus also, because it is in such short supply here that leaves would take years to balance it. Epsom salts is fine for Mg; bone meal is OK for P (NOT blood meal as someone has suggested, because it is so easy to over-apply), and for potash I like a staw mulch (because, I repeat, straw is rich in potash, and it helps with building soil organic matter) or "K-Mag" because it give you Mg as well.

When it comes to minerals, balance is everything, don't you agree? Regards, Peter B

When I moved here 35 years ago the soil test showed a sandy soil wuth low levels of Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potash, a soil pH of 5.7, no organic matter. Today the Magnesium, phosphorus, and potash levels are in the optimal range and the soils pH is 7.0 and all that has been added over the years is organic matter, primarily the waste tree leaves. Humus levels of the soils are 6 to 8 percent consistently. The leaves have been put down as mulch, composted with some of the garden "waste", most is left in place, and the only outside inputs were horse manure, chicken manure, rabbit manure, and blood meal. Then there is the dropppings from the birds that hang around the feeders.
The levels of phosphorus and potash came up with no purchased form of either. So if that did not come from the leaves, where did it?

I would hesitate to say that this soil test shows too much calcium. Yes, it is slightly above the ideal range, but that isnÂt a problem. Bases have to be way way out of whack before problems are encountered and even then it is no guarantee that it will make a statistical difference. The first priority should be that the bases are present (and that the pH is right) which is very important; then worry about the ratios which can be a problem but generally are not unless things are really out of whack. I look at hundreds of soil tests every year and the vast majority do not look this good.

Also, soil tests are not something you should take too literally; if the sample was re-run it would come out a little different. If the soil was re-sampled and a new test done it is a pretty safe bet that it would be quite a bit different. Take soil tests as a good indication of what is going on, not a rock solid fact.

And again, donÂt worry about the CEC. It really isnÂt important what the CEC is as long as you know how to work with it. Just like sandy soils need to be watered less, but more often they need to be fertilized less but more often. Adding organic materials is great, but they wonÂt last long in a sandy soil limiting gains in CEC.

My experience with sandy soils and organic matter does not quite support what fertilizersalesman says. What he says may well happen in sandy soisl with little or no organic matter, but if the humus level in the soil is raised to around 6 percent that organic matter will hold more water and nutrients in the soil requiring less watering and less "fertilizer". If I stopped adding organic matter to my sand it would revert back to just sand in a few years and would be the soil fertilizersalesman talks about, but by adding compost and the shredded leaf mulches I do I have a good, healthy soil for my plants to grow strong and healthy in. Same thing applies to clay soils with the organic matter applied getting between the soil particles to seperate them and allow moisture, plant nutrients, and plant roots to move through that soil easier.
However, fertilizersalesman is right, as I have said many times, that the soil test is a guide, and indication of what you are doing. A soil test, done periodically, will show the direction you are moving in, whether that direction is right or wrong. Soil nutrient loads are not something you can guess at. Just as important as these soil nutrient and soil pH tests, though, are the other hands on soil tests I've outlined here numerous times.

kimmsr,

I think we are on the same page here, adding organic matter to sandy soils to raise the CEC, water holding capacity etc is something that needs to be a continuous process if one hopes to maintain those conditions. This is very feasible in a garden, less so in perennial situations such as turf.

Getting off the subject, but technically organic matter does not get between clay particles separating them to allow water and air movement; it actually does just the opposite. The humic substances bind the clay particles together forming aggregates. The spaces between the aggregates is where the water and air moves.

I am going to expand on my off the subject response on organic matter clay relationships (even though no one asked). The major problem encountered with sodium in soil (other than plant toxicity and pH issues) is that sodium results in the dispersion of clay particles. Sodic soils are one massive clay brick with very little pore space. These soils are virtually impenetrable even to water. An addition of gypsum to soils in this condition results in calcium exchanging with the sodium and an improvement in soil structure. This happens because calcium cations have a smaller hydrated radius allowing the clay particles to stick together. It is a common misconception that gypsum will improve the physical properties of any clay soil.

fertilizersalesman and kimmsr: I maintain that the minerals in this soil are out of balance. I like to see the following percentages: Ca: 75-80; Mg: 16-18; K 3 1/2 - 8; Total 100%. By these guidelines there is too much Ca and too little Mg and K. The test results and the recommendations of the tester bear this out. Leaves alone might rebalance this soil, but that takes years; the reconmmrendations assume that the soil needs to be balanced right away. And P at 26#s is way low; it should be 100-200#s. Regards, Peter.

Peter, how long it would take any organic matter to change the nutrients in soil will depend on how active a Soil Food Web that soil has. Soils that are lifeless will take much longer than a soil that has at least some life to convert that organic matter into the plant nutrients the soil needs. You want the nutrient levels in balance, not necessarily at a specific level, and work slowly at getting to that balance. It will take mineral forms of these nutrients time to be made available to the plants as well, because the soil bacteria will have to convert them and if there is insufficient organic matter in the soil that won't happen.

Peter,

You are correct; in order to grow a decent crop some fertilizer is in order. A couple thoughts though; phosphorus tests tend to be fairly unreliable. Soils testing low in P commonly do not show P deficiencies. -I'm not saying no P should be added, but I wouldn't get panicky about it. The concept of having all the soil nutrients in 'balance' makes sense, but in practice there is a poor correlation between properly balanced soils and yield. If fertilizing it makes sense to add nutrients in ratios that will push the balance in the right direction (I do this), but it is by no means imperative or guaranteed increase yields. The test above is pretty darn close to balanced, and I would say that fertilizing to meet crop needs (which includes N P & K) should give good results.

Keeping in mind that soil test results and the fertilization recomendations are pretty general. If you want to get into real specifics, different crops will want different fertilizing in different soils.

In my soil the trick is to gently bring up the potassium and keep up with the nitrogen needs of the plant while not bringing up the phosphorus any more than it already is.

Good luck,
TCLynx

fertilizersalesman: I hear you, but the soil test has to be totally worthless if a phosphorus reading of 26 lbs. per acre really hides a level of 100 to 200 lbs., which is what I like for a good crop with good nutrition. So I would go along with the tester's recommendation, if I had spent money for the test.

kimmser: your point is a good one; the amount of P available from leaves depends on how active the decay system is in the soil. Let us see how active the decay system needs to be to get a P reading up from 26 lbs. to --let us say -- 150 lbs. Dry leaves contain from 0.2% to 0.4% P; let us say 0.3% for calculation purposes. So a jump of 124 lbs. (150 less 26) needs the addition and decay of 41,333 lbs. of leaves per acre (124 / 0.003). Bringing this down to 100 square feet terms (the size of my beds) this means about 94 lbs. of leaves. In a soil where the decay system is super-active, this would take 3 years to increase the P to 150 lbs. (How many leaves do your beds absorb in a year?) Looking at naturenut's test, I don't think her soil's decay is anywhere near super-active, so I suggest, respectfully, that a leaves-only approach would take anywhere between 5 and 10 years. And, I suspect she wants to see results next year.

Regards, Peter.

Peter,

Again, I am disagreeing with you about the need for phosphorus but for the sake of discussion: phosphorus rapidly reacts in soil forming stable compounds that are for the most part unavailable to plants. Over time added phosphorus becomes less and less available although a certain amount of phosphorus is always in solution. As it is removed by plants more P goes into solution and maintains an equilibrium. Note that plants can only utilize the P in solution. Measuring how much P is in solution is not very useful because what really needs to be known is how much is going to be available to plants throughout the season, that is how much P is going to go into solution as the small amount that is available to plants is taken up through the roots. Soil tests try and estimate this by digesting soil is various acid solutions (ÂBray ÂOlsen ÂMehlich etc.). Although these estimates are useful, as I said before they are by no means exact. So what I am saying isnÂt that the 26lbs is wrong and that there is really another 124lbs, what I am saying is that there is probably something like a ton of phosphorus per acre in the soil and the guess that 26lbs is going to be available is just that , a guess and there very well may end up being 200lbs available. Or it could go the other way and there could be less. There are a lot of factors that influence how much P is going to be available including things like pH and michorizal fungi. Fertilizing P in bands or clumps helps with availability because it takes longer for the P to react and become insoluble. So again, I am not disagreeing with you that some P should be added, I am just saying that I wouldnÂt lose any sleep over the results of this soil test. If the pH was 4.5 or 8 or something like that, then I would panic, but of all the things on a soil test you should take with a grain of salt, the P numbers are at the top of the list.

Wow, amazingly good advice above.

I think Fertilzersalesman has a point. Unless you are trying to get absolute maximum yield, I wouldn't lose sleep about the P deficiency. You may want to add some slow release rock phosphate but not too much. Applying too much is always worse than too little.

The CEC (cation exchange capacity) is a little bit low but very well balanced. You have as close to 100% base saturation as you can get. Look for crops that grow best in a neutral pH. Lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, melons, broccoli, and who knows what else. The low CEC can be attributed to a couple factors.

CEC is the soil's ability to hold on to ions (plant food) and comes from soil colloids. Colloids are very small particles, usually with a net negative charge. Colloids include clays, humus, and iron/aluminum oxides. Humus has the highest CEC then 2:1 clays, 1:1 clays, and then the oxides. I'm guessing you have small amount of humus and a small to moderate amount of 1:1 clay in your soil. Maybe kaolinite? As stated above, you can improve the CEC by adding organic matter. This is the better method, although less permanent. Another method of improving CEC would be adding clay. You don't want to do that because adding clay would change the soil texture and likely decrease water infiltration and aeration. By adding organic matter you can improve CEC, increase water retention, and improve soil structure. Add it every year when planting and as mulch. I would focus of that more than fertilizing.

Try some leaf mold, compost, or bagged leaf clippings with some leaves. You should count yourself lucky, you have a great soil. Good luck.

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful advice. I have since added quite a bit of leaf mold to a couple of the gardens. These gardens are closest to the river and contain the most sand. I acutally have a couple more flower gardens that are in the flood zone and have much better soil as far as texture and earthworms go. This area has flooded three times since we have lived hear, one winter the area retained river water all winter. I did not include this area in the soil test. The last 2 weeks I have gotten 3 pick up truck loads of leaves to add with the cow manure and hope to get another load soon. I am glad to hear that things are not nearly as bad as the graph looked when I opened the envelope.

Thanks again for everyones help.
Amy

m taggart: a small point -- the sum of the base saturation numbers is always 100%, which means to say that all the "attaching points" (for want of a better phrase) are always fully occupied with something. Now, not such a small point -- the minerals (at least the cations) in this sample are NOT ballanced, there is too much Ca and too little Mg and K. Furthermore, 26 lbs. of P is not enouugh to get a fair crop, let alone a perfect crop. Regards, Peter.

Peter, you are not exactly right about the base saturation; if the soils pH is below 7 there is going to be some hydrogen (acid) occupying the exchange sites. So although you are correct in that everything has to sum to 100%, the 'percent base saturation' number is commonly reported to less than 100% (because the hydrogen is not a base). Does that make sense?

Typically the numbers I look for are 2-5% potassium, 10-15% magnesium, and 65-75% calcium. What are you using?

fertilizersalesman: as it happens the soil tests I receive include hydrogen and sodium in the base calculation percentages, so the percentages always add up to 100%. That is to say: the colloid is always saturated - with something. So, leaving aside hydrogen and sodium in order to make comparison with the questioner's results, I prefer the ranges I included in my Oct 20 post: 3 1/2 - 8 K; 16 - 18 Mg; and 75 - 80 Ca. This uses more Ca and P than is conventional, and I find it produces vegetables with top Brix. This is in line also with the notion that minerals that are essentiasl to photo-synthesis are of course essential for Brix. These I take to be calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, and boron ( some are catalysts obviously). Regards, Peter.