Opinons on soil tests

[Boutique Tomatoes]

I've got three main garden sites, two raised bed gardens at home and a 1500 square foot site at a community garden about a mile away.

One of the raised beds has been in place for several years, had lots of compost added and I've had it tested before. Last time the organic material was about 14%, which the lab said was good but was below my goals. PH is still higher than I'd like, but is slowly coming down.

The new tomato garden soil came from the same place I originally got the other soil from. It needs some organic material but is fairly close in the analysis. I did not get organic material tested this time, as I knew it was low and I was adding composted manure anyway.

The community garden soil is horrid, even after hauling several trailer loads of compost last year it's still not much better. I got the site last year because basically nobody else wanted it, it was a scraggly combination of weeds and bare ground that is the lowest point in the garden, so it's wet as can be in the spring and the weeds get a great head start before you can get into it. Nobody had managed to get anything to grow in the spot for a couple of years, last year pretty much everything I planted there struggled or died except for a dozen tomatoes I specifically worked in a yard of compost for. This year I decided to try a green manure approach and tilled it all up and planted mammoth red clover on half and buckwheat on the other. I'll cut the buckwheat before it goes to seed and the clover in the fall and plant a mix of winter rye and hairy vetch for overwintering, tilling it all under again in the spring.

The things I'm curious about is that all of the soils show high to very high in most of the primary nutrients, except for nitrate. The gardens at home seem to be fine at the nitrate level they have from the compost and manure, but the community garden has almost none showing up in the test, which probably explains why nothing would grow there. All of the soils show no copper and some of the micronutrients are on the low side.

I'm tempted to address the low micronutrients directly, then start adding in Azomite or greensand when I plant next year. I'm hoping the green manure cover crops at the community garden will improve the soil so I can get something to grow there next year...

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome!

[Chris_NH]

Sounds like you're on the right track. Good luck!