Gardens

I'll throw this out I guess as a PIF thing,  make a $20donation at PIF and I will run your soil for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pH, Buffered pH, Magnesium, Calcium, Sodium, Organic Matter, and Cation Exchange Capacity.  I can also aid in fertilizer recommendations to enhance the soil conditions.  Just bring you soil sample to PIF or PM me for an address to mail it too. I run the nitrate in house and will send the rest of it out.

I have tried for three years to grow something in-ground in a garden area I set aside in my back yard, I have mixed, probably 12-15 ~ 3yd bags of garden-soil into the area, over a few years, fertilized, tried germinating my own seeds, different species of plants, ph testing, etc, etc, etc and what usually happens is as soon as I transfer something from the pot into the soil,, it virtually stops growing...

I spent A LOT of time in the garden last year, and it came to so little that this year I just gave up.

If this offer still stands, LMK where to donate (I don't yet know what a PIF is.) I have to know if my soil sucks or if I do...

I'll throw this out I guess as a PIF thing,  make a $20donation at PIF and I will run your soil for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pH, Buffered pH, Magnesium, Calcium, Sodium, Organic Matter, and Cation Exchange Capacity.  I can also aid in fertilizer recommendations to enhance the soil conditions.  Just bring you soil sample to PIF or PM me for an address to mail it too. I run the nitrate in house and will send the rest of it out.

I have tried for three years to grow something in-ground in a garden area I set aside in my back yard, I have mixed, probably 12-15 ~ 3yd bags of garden-soil into the area, over a few years, fertilized, tried germinating my own seeds, different species of plants, ph testing, etc, etc, etc and what usually happens is as soon as I transfer something from the pot into the soil,, it virtually stops growing...

I spent A LOT of time in the garden last year, and it came to so little that this year I just gave up.

If this offer still stands, LMK where to donate (I don't yet know what a PIF is.) I have to know if my soil sucks or if I do...

I will send you a PM later that answers your questions.


Eric Morgan
Trident Ultra 4.7
Not the guy selling the Outback
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

being at 2000' and in a redwood forest makes gardening interesting for us on the mountain. We do have a tiny "banana belt" where PG&E maintains an easement, so we do get some decent sun.
We do pretty much all raised beds/ whiskey barrels that we can fence to keep the deer off.
Our successes have been with lettuce, chard, various greens, winter squash, and beans. We tried radishes this year but they did not get enough sun, and then a gopher got in somehow and ate what was left .

This year we put in a mini orchard of nectarine, two apples, a fig, and two persimmon trees. All seem to be doing well & I think they are all going to make it now. In the heavily fortified enclosure ( the deer ain't gettin my nectarines!) we are setting up an herb garden for chives, cilantro, etc. We'll see how that goes.

I'll throw this out I guess as a PIF thing,  make a $20donation at PIF and I will run your soil for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, pH, Buffered pH, Magnesium, Calcium, Sodium, Organic Matter, and Cation Exchange Capacity.  I can also aid in fertilizer recommendations to enhance the soil conditions.  Just bring you soil sample to PIF or PM me for an address to mail it too. I run the nitrate in house and will send the rest of it out.

I have tried for three years to grow something in-ground in a garden area I set aside in my back yard, I have mixed, probably 12-15 ~ 3yd bags of garden-soil into the area, over a few years, fertilized, tried germinating my own seeds, different species of plants, ph testing, etc, etc, etc and what usually happens is as soon as I transfer something from the pot into the soil,, it virtually stops growing...

I spent A LOT of time in the garden last year, and it came to so little that this year I just gave up.

If this offer still stands, LMK where to donate (I don't yet know what a PIF is.) I have to know if my soil sucks or if I do...

The answer for you, my friend, is COMPOST! I very rarely "fertilize", but go heavy on the compost. I run a couple worm composting bins and frequently sprinkle the worm casting goodness around my veggie garden.

With soil that is well buffered with plenty of humic substances from the composted organic material, you an practically ignore NPK numbers, pH, etc, etc.. Just let the soil microbiology care for your plants for you.

OK this will sound like heresy, but is there a brand of compost I can BUY in a bag to do that? I ask because I have a very small yard, that, due to microclimate, is upwind of 80% of the windows in my house, and we open the windows just about every night. I would give my wife (who at times can outsmell a bloodhound) about 15minutes of the smell of composting coffee grounds and banana peels before she would start complaining 

I have turned a lot of this stuff http://www.lowes.com/pd_233866-11628-685_4294707957__?productId=3026867&Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNs%3Dp_product_qty_sales_dollar%7C1&facetInfo= into the soil, it has made the soil looser, but obviously hasn't helped the plants.

OK this will sound like heresy, but is there a brand of compost I can BUY in a bag to do that? I ask because I have a very small yard, that, due to microclimate, is upwind of 80% of the windows in my house, and we open the windows just about every night. I would give my wife (who at times can outsmell a bloodhound) about 15minutes of the smell of composting coffee grounds and banana peels before she would start complaining 

I have turned a lot of this stuff http://www.lowes.com/pd_233866-11628-685_4294707957__?productId=3026867&Ns=p_product_qty_sales_dollar|1&pl=1&currentURL=%3FNs%3Dp_product_qty_sales_dollar%7C1&facetInfo= into the soil, it has made the soil looser, but obviously hasn't helped the plants.

That looks to be good stuff.   What you generally get in bagged compost is steer manure that is composted with some other green product to add some level of moisture to the compost so it will break down.   Manure composts do have a lot of salts and too much of those salts can be bad.   AlexB is right on with his analysis.   The more compost you apply, in general,  the more N and P is applied.  The level of P is generally out of balance with what the crop need in terms of p (phosphate).  The P level is generally too high but it will not lead to any issues with most plants.  Animal manures just contain a higher amount of P than they do N but plants need much more N than they need P.  Composts generally do not have high levels of K (potassium or also can be called potash).   One problem that you could be having may be due to the soil's origin in your area.  You are near Sac right?   There are some central valley soils that have a kaolinite clay in their profile.  These specific clays will fix the K rendering them unavailable to the crop for a very long time.  Many delta growers need to apply very high levels of K to saturate these sites in the soil that will then leave K available to their crops.  All of your veggie crops should grow well in a soil with a pH from 6.5-7.5      Keeping an eye on pH is critical over time.  Any fertilizer that is not in the nitrate form will lower pH.   Specifically this include organic composts, urea and ammonium.  These products in their conversion to nitrate (most plant available form of N) release hydrogen ions into the soil.  pH is the logo rhythmic measurement of hydrogen ions,  so the more hydrogen ions you have,  the lower the pH.  I had a grower that at one time was only using ammonium sulfate to fertilizer his fields.  The acidifying activity of the ammonium and the sulfur dropped the pH into the mid 5's and he had a crop failure.

Screw the PM,  here it goes.  By PIF,  I meant the Pay it Forward Paddle on 7/13/13.  I hope to be able to attend but I cannot confirm it yet.  Mail me a 1qt bag of soil to 39105 Highway 101s, Soledad Ca 93960.  I will run the nitrate level in house and send out the soil for testing the reminder of the tests.  PIF should be posting a PayPal donation link at some point,  make your donation that way or include a check to me and I will get it to an A-Hull. I can tell a lot from these results and offer some specific advice.  I posted directions for soil collection above, but let me know if I was too vague.

One cool thing that my company is getting into is the measurement of a soil's health.  We take your soil,  dry it at about 100 degrees overnight, grind it, then add a little bit of water to it to saturate it.  We then put this in a jar with a test strip that measures the amount of CO2 the soil produced in a 24hour period.   This CO2 "burst" has a direct correlation with the amount of N that your soil will produce naturally over one year's time.  Soils with really high CO2 reading will not need any N added to them in the growing season.  I'm not doing this test yet but have all the supplies and should be going on it shortly.  The CO2 is produced as the soil microorganisms grow and divide.  Their growth and division leads to the release of N in the soil.

The short answer is no, there are no really good bagged compost products available... The reason is that most bagged composts are made from municipal yard waste (whatever people happen to throw in their green bin, including whatever chemicals they sprayed on it) combined with shredded wooden pallets. Not exactly what your soil wants.

If you want to buy compost, call around to soil suppliers in your area. In the east bay, we have American Soil and Acapulco Rock and Soil. Both these spots offer a compost which is at least better than what you'll find at big box stores.

If you have a real interest in organic gardening, you should look into buying or making a worm bin. The bins have absolutely ZERO smell when you run them properly, and my worms go through about a pound or more of food waste and coffee grounds per day. This is just two 10-gallon Rubbermaid bins with holes drilled in the bottoms that live in my basement. The end result a couple months later is pure "black gold" for your garden. Plants LOVE it.

My garden here at "work" is a little lagging but it will come around after that rain....

Yeah I am in West Sacramento, the yard is a thin layer of fill I had imported when I re-graded the yard, over this nasty black clay. I had to dig through this stuff to pour some foundations in sonotubes once, it took a pick-axe to break the first 8 inches, then it was another foot and a half of digging through dense, sticky peanut butter, christ its nasty...

And AlexB, it is not so much that I am interested in organic farming, as just getting my plants to reliably grow without signing my life over to them. I know enough about myself to know that gardening can be rewarding, but it comes pretty far behind my 3 young kids, wife, job, fishing, hunting, kayaking, rod building, etc, etc, etc. In other words if I repeatedly fail at something, or it becomes waaay more work than reward, I have plenty to move on to.

Right now I am trying to streamline the ways to make this rewarding enough to want to put more work into it  Hence the question about buying compost, which I figured might offend some purists. Sorry about that!

Cappy I am going to Paypal that right now, this weekend I will start the test-bores, REALLY looking forward to the results/suggestions!!

Dude... I'm sure GRS would have a ton of veggies cut & shredded from his weekly brush-trimmings in L.C. Not sure how 'fine' the mulch needs to be... but I recall shoveling tons of that sh*t as a kid. Likely fiill your truck up, and you'd get to check out his new Lab (8wks?) 'Remmington'... the pointing & fetching wonder-dog.

xoxo AWS

 

  I'm a firm believer in worm casting as well, although I have not started my worm bin this year due to work travel (They will starve if I my wife has to feed them! ) AlexB is correct, when the worms are happy the bin won't smell.  The worm castings (Poop) is like crack for plants!  Plant roots can directly absorb the casting immediately. Another plus side to a worm bin, live bait!  In fact my worm bins are started with "Red wigglers" I've found that night crawlers make poor composters. 1 tub of wiggler (50 ct) can quickly become 500 when there happy! more worms =more compost!

I gotcha. And I'm not offended in the least.

In reality, even bagged compost is gonna be better than no compost, so I say give it a shot!

  I'm a firm believer in worm casting as well, although I have not started my worm bin this year due to work travel (They will starve if I my wife has to feed them! ) AlexB is correct, when the worms are happy the bin won't smell.  The worm castings (Poop) is like crack for plants!  Plant roots can directly absorb the casting immediately. Another plus side to a worm bin, live bait!  In fact my worm bins are started with "Red wigglers" I've found that night crawlers make poor composters. 1 tub of wiggler (50 ct) can quickly become 500 when there happy! more worms =more compost!

Have any literature/photos on how to build one?

~Bill

 

  Let me dig up a link~

  I'm a firm believer in worm casting as well, although I have not started my worm bin this year due to work travel (They will starve if I my wife has to feed them! ) AlexB is correct, when the worms are happy the bin won't smell.  The worm castings (Poop) is like crack for plants!  Plant roots can directly absorb the casting immediately. Another plus side to a worm bin, live bait!  In fact my worm bins are started with "Red wigglers" I've found that night crawlers make poor composters. 1 tub of wiggler (50 ct) can quickly become 500 when there happy! more worms =more compost!

Yup. Free live bait is a bonus. I started my first single bin with just a couple little tubs of red worms from the bait shop, and they have since reproduced massively. When I harvested and screened that first bin (about 5 months after starting it) there had to be a solid 2-3 lbs of worms in there. I split the population and started a second bin, both of which are now food scrap eating machines. It's neat watching a big watermelon rind disappear in a matter of days!