That ph is a little low for many vegies. I wonder more about your fertility/fertilizing level.

Optimal soil pH for vegetables, flowers, and most of the plants we grow is about 6.0 to 7.0 so your soil pH is not all that far out, if it is correct. There are a number of reasons why plants have yellow leaves, plant chlorosis, and while Iron is one there are many more ranging from lack of Magnesium to lack or, or even too much water. Perhaps this article will be of some help.

http://extension.illinois.edu/focus/index.cfm?problem=chlorosis

This is one of the better reasons why a good reliable soil test should be done periodically.

kimmq is kimmsr

hi kimmq

thanks for the tips. Very god article as well. I use a Keltec pH and soil moisture meter for the pH assessment. I think I'm going to have the soil tested. The Ag dept. here at Cal Poly will do this.

i appreciate the help

DBBOB

There's one big problem with a soil test magically giving one a perfect analysis, and that's one of scale. In a 15X30 bed 2/3 of a foot thick you have roughly ten cubic yards of stuff. Underlying that is 450 square feet of unknown soil that's mind-bogglingly thick. You have to ask yourself just WHAT a representative sample of that soil is, and when you send that sample in for analysis, try to think of how tiny a sample of that sample they’re going to look at.

A soil analysis of well-managed long time tilled farm acres has nothing in common with a small garden plot with wildly varying levels of fertilization, a zillion different crops, varied areas of crop residues, a gallon of garbage dumped in one corner or two, more bagged mix dumped at the near end than the far end, and so on. Be very thorough in gathering your sample. If your shallow rooted plants are growing better or worse as a group than your deep rooted ones, decide how much subsoil to include.

Picking a “representative” sample is everything. Dig everywhere. Mix fanatically. Don’t trust the recommendations you get back too much. It’s all a guide, not a sheet of rules.

Good advice. Take cores if you can, with a bulb digger for example, or a piece of pipe. Top 6-8" is where all the action is with vegetables, so concentrate on that. Take several samples, break up finely and mix well. Then fill your sample jar.

Consumer grade pH meters are notoriously inaccurate. It helps to mix 50/50 soil and distilled water and allow to sit a few minutes, then test the pH of the slurry. Calibration is still a question though.

Possibly there is too much undecomposed woody material in the mix, which is tying up nitrogen. Not sure what a 'planter mix' is, if it's meant to be a container mix (aka 'potting soil') it may have a lot of ground bark and wood chips for aeration. To compensate, container plants may need extra nitrogen fertilizer. This kind of product isn't really meant for in-ground gardening.

Labs do not always automatically do nitrogen, unless you ask for it. It's not always necessary in home gardening, particularly with well established beds. N varies seasonally so many of us gardeners don't pay too much attention to it as long as things are growing. Yellowing leaves could be an N deficiency. I would suggest including nitrogen on this one.