Sending my compost and worm castings to a lab...

Rasta Roy said:

Shopping around pays off! My local grow stores sell perlite for the same price as your organic shop. I get the same 4 cubic foot bag (not chunky just horticulture grade just like yours) for like 14 bucks after tax at a landscape and garden supplier. then a bale of peat moss for 13 bucks. Quality compost from food scraps and leaves, and mushroom compost (each bag is always filled with earth worms) for five bucks a piece.

It's ridiculous.

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heh, isn't mushroom compost supposed to be sterilized?
I'd be butt-hurt if I bought a pasteurized sterile mushroom starter and had worms in it
sounds almost blasphemous to say though, worms are GOOD
buuuuut not for a sterile mushroom compost
sorta makes me wanna grow mushrooms..
never done it
but last time I shroomed it was almost traumatic..
gettin old I suppose

Wetdog said:

8cf of perlite is also what I keep on hand. A 4cf bag works out pretty well for a 3.8cf bale of peat moss. Not exact, but close, since my aeration is ~40%+. When I open the second bag, I'll order/buy another.

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I could use about 40% more soil right now anyways!!! It just occured to me that it would help get more pots out of what I have already, cheap also!

greasemonkeymann said:

sorta makes me wanna grow mushrooms.

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I did it a couple of years ago, but I really could not get past the 2nd flush because of contamination! I was told that if I was serious, I would isolate my strains. Strain Isolation:

Also, like pot. Different strains have different affects. I hear the Mexican and Puerto Rican are more spiritual. I was running a strain from Cambodia and people kept reporting strong visuals and it was almost too much for some people, like they had a bad trip. I hear that Mexican strains are more "spiritual" and have a warm body feel compared to the Cambodians!

greasemonkeymann said:

heh, isn't mushroom compost supposed to be sterilized?
I'd be butt-hurt if I bought a pasteurized sterile mushroom starter and had worms in it
sounds almost blasphemous to say though, worms are GOOD
buuuuut not for a sterile mushroom compost
sorta makes me wanna grow mushrooms..
never done it
but last time I shroomed it was almost traumatic..
gettin old I suppose

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They sell it as mushroom compost and peat humus. The farm it comes from takes their spent mushroom soil and mixes it with some other stuff they need to compost around their property and then they let their worms have at it. So it's definitely not sterile anymore.

greasemonkeymann said:

Take away my compost and i'm just an above-average grower, I freely admit that.
but armed with compost?
well, anybody can grow amazing plants.
Not to mention that it's great for landfills as well, all those leaves aren't getting buried or composted improperly

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Preach it brother!

MustangStudFarm said:

Look at this site, it explains the differences in the soil tests. Well, kind of.

http://www.agronext.iastate.edu/soilfertility/presentations/mbotest.pdf

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Just looked into that PDF -- aaaahhhhh "making the fertilizer reccomendation" ahhhh wrong world, makes me cringe!
So I can't think or formulate, but I can copy and paste to espress myself haha
(it's kinda like people without arms who get painting with their feet - though my cut-n-paste may not be as amazing haha)

I went and pulled a nice graphic out of the "smaller" Soilfoodweb course regarding soil tests:

So you have a Melich 3 test going, what's the amount of exchangeable (not even plant available) nutes going to tell you about something that is getting directly to your plants and killing them in a trice ... not much?
Maybe your N levels test can let you know if that rabbitmanure compost still has too much of it and burns your plants? Same effect as the yellow spots on a peed-on lawn? After all, you wrote it got worse when you added more of that...

If it were my soil, I would like to know if there's some extreme imbalance or contamination with poison of some sort...
Really looking forward to those results and what you make of them!

MustangStudFarm said:

Also, like pot. Different strains have different affects. I hear the Mexican and Puerto Rican are more spiritual. I was running a strain from Cambodia and people kept reporting strong visuals and it was almost too much for some people, like they had a bad trip. I hear that Mexican strains are more "spiritual" and have a warm body feel compared to the Cambodians!

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heh, at first I thought you were talking pot strains
I was like "spiritual"??
I want some of that herb!
haha, but yea, never grown my own mushrooms, i'd speculate (from what I hear) that fresh is WAY more potent
but a "warm body feel"?
sounds pretty nice

greasemonkeymann said:

sorta makes me wanna grow mushrooms..
never done it
but last time I shroomed it was almost traumatic..
gettin old I suppose

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I dont really like eating them either. It was mostly how they made my stomach feel, so I tried it in tea a couple of times and lowered the dose.

If there was a market for them, it would be more profitable then pot I think. No market though. People will talk about mushrooms all day, but it is a "some times" thing unlike pot. People need pot everyday lol.... I gave up after going organic, its hard to do side-by-side because what is good for the soil is bad for the mushrooms. I was running a flood table back then!

greasemonkeymann said:

"warm body feel"?

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I get more of a feeling that "God is mad at me" when they first come on. I dont think that I really like them anymore. A few of my friends keep buggin me about them, but they can do that shit themselves.

calliandra said:

Just looked into that PDF -- aaaahhhhh "making the fertilizer reccomendation" ahhhh wrong world, makes me cringe!
So I can't think or formulate, but I can copy and paste to espress myself haha
(it's kinda like people without arms who get painting with their feet - though my cut-n-paste may not be as amazing haha)

I went and pulled a nice graphic out of the "smaller" Soilfoodweb course regarding soil tests:
View attachment 3833030
So you have a Melich 3 test going, what's the amount of exchangeable (not even plant available) nutes going to tell you about something that is getting directly to your plants and killing them in a trice ... not much?
Maybe your N levels test can let you know if that rabbitmanure compost still has too much of it and burns your plants? Same effect as the yellow spots on a peed-on lawn? After all, you wrote it got worse when you added more of that...

If it were my soil, I would like to know if there's some extreme imbalance or contamination with poison of some sort...
Really looking forward to those results and what you make of them!

Click to expand...

I have two responses to your post...
this one.

and this one.

calliandra said:

Just looked into that PDF -- aaaahhhhh "making the fertilizer reccomendation" ahhhh wrong world, makes me cringe!

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You gotta remember, GreaseMonkey has a jack-ass sense of humor. That is why we get along! I think that he was trying to be funny and not an ass lol...

Yeah I was just trying to explain why I think a chemical analysis won't be very helpful.

Because chemical soil tests analyze only parts of the total nutrients that are in the soil (or compost), but ALL the nutrients are relevant when there is an established soil food web processing it, since it has the ability to transform a nutrient from "extractable" to "exchangeable" to "soluble". So the chemical content of the substrate is actually irrelevant - it ignores the whole organic process.
Of course, these tests were designed to prescribe inorganic fertilizers, they have to ignore the fact that plants would get their nutes via microorganisms if the fertilizers and co. hadn't killed them all, or the fert prducers would run out of business.

Only the soluble nutrients are directly available to the plant. And to my mind, in this case it would have to be something in that form that is off (in terms of excess, since there can be no deficiency except in microorganisms), if at all? But Mehlich includes the extractable ones... so it's all fuzzy and not really fitting.

So based on that reasoning, the only thing the tests could tell you is whether you have too much soluble nitrogen in there, and answer the question regarding possible excess of rabbit urine not getting processed whilst composting..

That said, I really like that aeration theory, especially after reading you had a foul stink in your growspace for a bit too.

But still curious to see what the lab/rikdabrick make of the results!
Cheers!

greasemonkeymann said:

I have two responses to your post...
this one.
View attachment 3833046
and this one.
View attachment 3833047

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Thanks I got it the first time though, no need to rub it in

calliandra said:

Yeah I was just trying to explain why I think a chemical analysis won't be very helpful.

Because chemical soil tests analyze only parts of the total nutrients that are in the soil (or compost), but ALL the nutrients are relevant when there is an established soil food web processing it, since it has the ability to transform a nutrient from "extractable" to "exchangeable" to "soluble". So the chemical content of the substrate is actually irrelevant - it ignores the whole organic process.
Of course, these tests were designed to prescribe inorganic fertilizers, they have to ignore the fact that plants would get their nutes via microorganisms if the fertilizers and co. hadn't killed them all, or the fert prducers would run out of business.

Only the soluble nutrients are directly available to the plant. And to my mind, in this case it would have to be something in that form that is off (in terms of excess, since there can be no deficiency except in microorganisms), if at all? But Mehlich includes the extractable ones... so it's all fuzzy and not really fitting.

So based on that reasoning, the only thing the tests could tell you is whether you have too much soluble nitrogen in there, and answer the question regarding possible excess of rabbit urine not getting processed whilst composting..

That said, I really like that aeration theory, especially after reading you had a foul stink in your growspace for a bit too.

But still curious to see what the lab/rikdabrick make of the results!
Cheers!

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calliandra, thank you for all the "Like"s to my post today. I appreciate it.

No offense is meant by my rebuttal to some of your statements. There are some incorrect statements I saw in your post. The Mehlich 3 test tests for all plant available nutrients. Like you mentioned, the "Soluble" tests test for minerals that are available to the plant right now and can be freely absorbed by the plant with out any energy expenditure. The tests that test for "Exchangeable" minerals are ones that are available to the plant with the help of soil microbes and the exchange of hydrogen ions for other mineral ions which are created by CO2 being exuded by the plants roots and soil microbes. And the "Total Extractable" tests are for determining the total amounts of minerals that will be available eventually with no outside additions, which could be hundreds of years. For example if you have small rocks in your soil, all the minerals of those rock are potentially available and would be extracted using a "Total Etractable" test, but ALL the minerals won't be able to be taken up by any plant until the rock has broken down completely which could be a loooong time depending on the climate and the type of rocks. IMO the "Total Extractable" tests have no real value to a grower or farmer since the total extractable minerals will be constantly changing with the addition of soil amendments and some of the minerals will never be available in a healthy soil.

Soil microbes aren't going to be able to transform most minerals from "Extractable" to "Exchangeable". The will transform some, but most minerals will stay in a non-exchangeable form being that the break down of soil minerals can take awhile.

And these tests are not only for inorganic fertilizers. The exchangeable minerals that the Mehlich 3 and AA pH8.2 test for are far more available with soil microbes. Without soil life a plant's absorption of minerals in the soil would be highly limited. Any of the "Soluble" test would be better for testing inorganic fertilizers.

And what do you mean there can be no soil deficiencies except in microorganisms? There most certainly can be mineral deficiencies in soil. I did a soil prescriptions for a couple that live back east recently and they had several minerals in their soil that were virtually non-existent. For example, their phosphorous levels were so low it would take just about 9000 lbs of CalPhos per acre to hit ideal levels of phosphorous for them and they needed something like 1300 lbs of potassium sulfate to hit ideal potassium numbers. There were several other deficiencies, but I can't remember them off the top of my head right now. The soil tests I've run in my area are generally severely low in P, B, Cu and Mn. All of those minerals have huge effects on plants' health. If your soil doesn't have luxury levels of any mineral (in the proper balance) then that mineral that is in deficiency will affect the next the next step of minerals used in the biochemical sequence. The most deficient minerals (in proper balance) or the most toxic ones will be the regulators on the overall health of the plant. In other words, a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

And a Mehlich 3 test will give a very good indication on excesses or deficiencies of the minerals we generally test for in soil with the exception of Ca and Mg in alkaline soils.

If you or anybody else is interested in some good books on soil science let me know. There's a lot of world class info available on this here web.

My guess is Mustang's soil is too high in potassium and there's a good chance it's too high in magnesium. I'm interested to see the results too.

Anyway, no offense is meant. None of that should be read with a condescending tone in mind.

@MustangStudFarm did you check to see if you could get a silica test? I highly recommend it. If there's only 4 things you could have balanced in your soil it should be sulfur, boron, silica and calcium. They set the stage for everything else. Silica basically makes the highways inside the plant, and boron drives and delivers the calcium and calcium is the foundation mineral for overall plant health.

And I saw a suggestion to use dolomite by "I forgot who". If you want to use dolomite I would only use it if you have a magnesium deficiency and that would only be to fulfill the ideal Mg levels. I would use other amendments for calcium and actually I personally wouldn't use dolomite. I use Sul-Po-Mag or Magnesium Sulfate to hit the levels I want.

And just FYI I would use Vansil W-10 (calcium silicate) or gypsum for calcium amendments. Those are the two best calcium amendments IMO.

I'm off to bed.

calliandra said:

Thanks I got it the first time though, no need to rub it in

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hey now!
it's a compliment to you
you were speaking the equivalent of Cantonese to me
you know I loooooove ya darling

course that gif seems less than genuine, but I just love that movie..

rikdabrick said:

@MustangStudFarm did you check to see if you could get a silica test? I highly recommend it. If there's only 4 things you could have balanced in your soil it should be sulfur, boron, silica and calcium. They set the stage for everything else. Silica basically makes the highways inside the plant, and boron drives and delivers the calcium and calcium is the foundation mineral for overall plant health.

And I saw a suggestion to use dolomite by "I forgot who". If you want to use dolomite I would only use it if you have a magnesium deficiency and that would only be to fulfill the ideal Mg levels. I would use other amendments for calcium and actually I personally wouldn't use dolomite. I use Sul-Po-Mag or Magnesium Sulfate to hit the levels I want.

And just FYI I would use Vansil W-10 (calcium silicate) or gypsum for calcium amendments. Those are the two best calcium amendments IMO.

I'm off to bed.

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I feel ya man, remember though, he said in smaller containers they did great.
I stand by my original hunch, I think it's the soil's ratio to aeration/irregular watering tendencies
We'll see soon enough

greasemonkeymann said:

I stand by my original hunch, I think it's the soil's ratio to aeration/irregular watering tendencies
We'll see soon enough

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I picked up some perlite today. I will shoot for 40% aeration and see where that gets me. I have a 3'x3'x3' stall that is full of recycled soil, I didnt add anything to it and it had a good amount of worms eating the cardboard cover. I will start with this stuff and not any manure to it this time. I really need to transplant into 3gal pots for vege and they have been doing well with the soil, its the 8gal in flowering that they dont like...

I found out that we are dealing with an extension office to the OSU lab. I think that they have slower return times, damn its like watching water boil. I dont think that I am getting results back anytime soon.

I like to think of myself as a kind hearted jack-ass, I cant call you one without calling myself one... I was referring to your humor anyways.

I might be guilty of being a full-fledged jack ass???