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Soil Tests

I’m sure there must be a lab around somewhere I can send a soil sample to for analysis, but I don’t know one off hand. For the time being, I decided to try buying a soil testing kit and testing my garden soil myself.

I finally got around to trying out my soil testing kit today:

Soil Testing Kit and Soil Sample

Just by looking at my soil sample I can see it is very sandy.  It also contains a lot of silt because when wet it is very sloppy. The canals surrounding my garden also have a lot of silt in them.  The sample appears very low in organic material. The instructions say the soil must be completely dry before testing it, and the sample above has been sitting around for a few days now.

The instructions advise doing several tests from different locations and averaging the results. For now I am just testing the one sample, but I will take more samples over time especially as I suspect problems in different parts of the garden and want to investigate further.

I suspect the previous gardener was not very sophisticated, and probably added different fertilizers and other amendments to different parts of the garden. I also saw he was growing beans in a few places, perhaps making parts of the garden higher in nitrogen than others. Unless I think there is a very obvious or urgent problem, I’m going to wait before adding anything until I have had a chance to think about it and see how things grow.

While this soil sample was taken from a part of the garden I hadn’t added anything to yet, I’ve added compost to most parts of the garden now, so if there are any nutrient problems, I have probably reduced them.

The contents of the kit looks like this:

Testing Kit Contents

There are several bottles of liquids and vials of powders, together with some empty vials, a plunger assembly, filters and o-rings for the plunger, a few scoops and some instructions with color charts to look up results.

The kit does four soil related tests: Acidity (Ph), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K).

Except for the Ph test, where the soil is mixed directly together with the color changing chemical, all of the test have two parts. The first part involves mixing the soil together with an extractant solution, then passing it through a filter in the plunger assembly to remove the soil. The color changing chemical is then mixed separately with the extractant solution and compared to the provided charts.

Sorry this picture didn’t come out well, but this is the Ph test:

Ph Test

From this test I can see the soil Ph is 7.5, all the way at the far end of the test. Since the test only goes up to 7.5, and this is also my reading, it’s possible my soil is even more alkaline than that. This result conflicts with another Ph test I did a few months ago, which gave a result of 6.5.

This tells me I need to investigate this further. Perhaps there is a problem with one or both of the tests I used, or perhaps the Ph is very different in different parts in my garden.

It’s possible I have a bit of a Ph problem to deal with in the garden.

The N test:

Nitrogen Test

In my opinion, the results of this test lie somewhere between ‘Medium to Low’ and ‘Low’.

At least in this part of the garden, I need more N.

The P test:

P Test

I think the results of this test are somewhere between ‘High to Medium’ and ‘Medium’, closer to the former.

At least in this part of the garden, I don’t need any more P.

K test:

For this test, I don’t have a clear picture of the results. In fact the results were very hard to read, and I don’t have much confidence in them. Perhaps after I do the test a few more times I will learn better how to read the results.

The scale looks like this:

K Test Scale

The test is supposed to result in cloudiness that you can compare to these pictures, but the result I got was almost totally clear. I repeated the test, and the second time I got a little cloudiness for a brief moment, perhaps close to the ‘Medium’ indication here, but it was really hard to know if this was right.

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Our Legacy as Consumers

It’s been in the news here. The world’s oceans are full of plastic, and the problem is growing. Scientists are just starting to realize how big this problem really is.

Plastic is not biodegradable and doesn’t break down in the environment, all it does is break apart into smaller and smaller pieces, so called ‘Mermaid’s Tears’. Sand nearly everywhere in the world has been found to contain particles of plastic. These particles are eaten by marine animals and enter the food chain.

Kate just posted on the plastic soup floating in the Pacific Ocean that continues to grow. Some of this is consumer waste, but a lot of it is intentional or accidental dumping by the manufacturers or shipping companies. After all, when the Exxon Valdez sank it was big news, but when is the last time you heard of a cargo ship losing it’s load of plastic?

We all know when we buy something it has to be disposed of eventually, using landfill space or polluting the environment.

What about the other legacies?

I recently came across a series of websites or people’s Flickr accounts giving information and pictures about abandoned buildings or other structures. Apparently there’s a real following of people for this kind of thing. One that I found most interesting was the Dixie Square shopping mall in Harvey, Illinois, about a 25 minute drive from Chicago, abandoned in 1978 and still standing. This is the mall where the Blues Brothers movie was filmed.

The mall is standing there empty because there’s no money to tear it down, and no one wants to reuse the site for anything else. The empty mall now sits in the middle of an economically depressed area.

This isn’t the only abandoned mall! Here’s a website that tracks abandoned malls and bankrupt retailers. The Dixie Square mall is a little unusual, because most abandoned sites get demolished or refurbished and used for something else, usually bigger and better. What happens when they day comes when the economy can’t support building something bigger and better? Just what exactly is going to happen to all of these big box stores when big boxes aren’t needed anymore? Will something bigger and better take their place? Will we be able to continue expanding our economies at this rate after Peak Oil? Will we find some other way to ‘recycle’ this infrastructure?

Malls aren’t the only thing abandoned. Other sites include this amusement park (also here), London’s abandoned tube stations or numerous places in the former USSR.

Of course there are any number of scenarios for the future, not all of them bad, but seeing pictures of all of this abandoned infrastructure has really made me think about some of them.

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Tomato Trench Planting Method

I recently did a couple of posts about starting tomatoes in a tray, then transplanting the seedlings deep into a pot.

Tomatoes are one of the few plants that benefit from being transplanted deeply, because they can grow new roots from the part of the plant buried. If possible it’s good to transplant tomato seedlings a couple of times in the course of moving them out to the garden.

Marc of Garden Desk just made a post that goes along with this idea nicely, about planting tomatoes with the trench method.

I mentioned before that since tomatoes are one of the few plants that can develop roots along a buried stem, that other vegetable plants should be buried to about the same level when transplanting. Mostly this is true. It’s come up in discussion recently that if you have a leggy seedling of almost any vegetable variety, that planting deep can help with the legginess. This can be a reason to plant a non-tomato plant seedling deep. Just be reasonable, and keep in mind that some plants may not like being planted too deep.

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Starting With Grass

Starting a new garden on grass has to be one of the most discouraging things imaginable.

Jane on Horiticultural recently posted on how new allotmenteers in the UK often get stuck with some of the worst plots, and how this can quickly turn into a very discouraging situation for beginning gardeners. I think anyone starting an urban garden in North America or elsewhere can easily find themselves in a similarly discouraging situation trying to get rid of an established lawn.

Doviende on Anarchocyclist has recently been posting about a garden he is expecting to build. He lives in the Vancouver area of British Columbia, and he is looking for a new place to live, a rental with roommates, and space for a garden. Since he hasn’t found his new place yet, there’s no way to know for sure what it will look like, but it seems likely he will have to start with a lawn.

I have some ideas, but I was also hoping some of my readers would have some ideas for him too. One of the things I already commented on in his post was that different gardeners had different ideas about things, and one of the best things was for him to read a couple of different people’s ideas, then decide what he thought was the best for him to do. In that spirit, even if you disagree with me, I hope you will feel free to share any thoughts you have.

What to Look for in a Garden Space

The first thing may be to think about what makes a good garden, and what kinds of things he should be looking for.

Sun is very important for vegetables. It’s very important if the garden area gets any shade at all, for any part of the day. Ideally, the garden should have no obstruction towards the south.

It will also help a lot if the garden is as level as possible.

You should give some thought to if the ground could be contaminated with anything. Perhaps if it is next to an old house, there could be lead paint in the ground. Maybe if it used to be an industrial or agricultural area, there may be other chemicals present. You might ask around if anyone knows of any possible contaminants.

A soil test might be a good thing to do early on, both for nutrients and contamination, if it can be arranged.

Can anyone think of anything else?

Getting Rid of the Lawn

Grass is so hard to get rid of in part because it hides so many other weeds. Even if you manage to quickly kill the grass itself, you can easily find yourself battling with dozens of new and different weeds. You also always have to plan a good barrier on the edges of the garden, or encroaching weeds will constantly be issue.

Digging is always only a partial solution, because pieces of roots will always be left in the ground that will grow into new weeds. Using a garden tiller on fresh grass is a recipe for disaster because it will chew the weeds up into tiny pieces which will all turn into new weeds. Digging also always uncovers weed seeds buried in the ground.

Many people argue a garden tiller is never a good thing to use.  In any event it should never be used on ground with established weeds in it. I use one sometimes for green manure or for mixing amendments into the ground, but I will probably stop using it eventually because it’s not really very useful and wastefull of energy.

No-dig or no-till solutions always take time, and when you are starting a new garden the last thing you want to do is sit around and wait another 6 months waiting for the weeds to die.

So what’s the answer? Probably some some combination of dig and no-dig methods? At least to begin with?

Lasagna Gardening

I suggested that depending on the size of his new garden, he take the approach of mulching layers. For example covering the grass first with a layer of cardboard or newspapers, then a mulching material like grass, leaves or compost. The expectation is that this would rot in place, and the plants could just go on top of it, perhaps together with more mulch.

I didn’t think to mention it before, but he may also want to combine this with raised beds. Raised beds might be too expensive and too much trouble if he is only going to stay in the same place for a few years. Raised beds can be made with almost any material except treated wood! Treated wood will have chemicals you won’t want in your vegetable garden. Wood that isn’t rot resistant (like pine) will only last a couple of years, but maybe that will be enough. Bricks or rocks also make nice raised beds, as does plastic lumber.

How long should he wait before trying to grow on ground prepared this way? I think about 6 months.

Lazy Bed Method Potatoes

This is an Irish method for growing potatoes directly on grass. Details can be found here, and a variation on the method here.

Basically if you imagine a 4 foot (120cm) wide row in your garden subdivided into 1 foot (30cm) sections as follows:

*      A      *      B      *      C      *      D      *

*              *               *              *               *

*              *               *              *               *

*              *               *              *               *

*              *               *              *               *

On row B & C you first put a layer of compost, then the seed potatoes on top of that. You then dig up the sod in rows A and D and fold it over the seed potatoes with the grass facing down.

As the potatoes grow you should ‘hill them up’ by digging dirt from rows A and D, always maintaining about 2 in (5 cm) of potato plant above the ground.

About a week after they bloom you can use your hands to search for new potatoes in the ground, but remember this will reduce your final harvest. After the halliums (plant tops) die back, you can dig up the potatoes in the ground.

If you grow potatoes you should learn about late blight, because this has become a serious problem all over the world. I can give you more information on this if you are interested.

After you grow potatoes like this, the ground will be left (mostly) free of weeds and ready to be planted with something else.

Rotation is very important with potatoes, and you shouldn’t use the same ground more than once in three or four years, so you should plan accordingly and only use a fraction of your garden for potatoes.

Compost

Doviende asked about compost, and what are good systems for beginning gardeners.  Specifically he was thinking about a compost tumbler, so he could get compost quickly.

I’ve never used a compost tumbler, so I can’t really offer a lot of advice.  I’ve always viewed a tumbler as unnecessary and too expensive, but maybe there is someone out there who has had a good experience with them?

Does anyone have any other suggestions for a good composting system he could set up considering his circumstances?  A container or a pile?

What to Grow and When

Doviende in his post said:

“We’re moving May 1st, so counting a few days to actually dig up an area of grass in the backyard and maybe bring in some extra topsoil, i should be able to plant things in about the 2nd week of May.”

What’s realistic to plan for and expect?  What kinds of things should he think about planting and when?

Nitrogen fixing plants like peas and beans might help the soil, but these are difficult to grow when there are a lot of weeds.

Can anyone think of good plants he could get in quickly in May?

Am I missing anything else in this post?  Does anyone else have any other ideas?

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Cypress Mulch/Wood Chips

Sorry, this post is probably mostly of interest to people in the US or Canada.

Mother Jones magazine sent me an email telling me about an article in their latest issue on Louisiana’s Mulch Madness. The National Wildlife Federation also covered this last year in an article.

It seems cypress trees make good mulch, but these are old growth trees that are being harvested in unsustainable ways, and in some cases illegally. These trees are also critical for the protection and natural habitats of the Gulf coast wetlands.

If you buy mulch or wood chips, make sure it doesn’t come from cypress trees!

Honestly, this is just one more excellent example of why your garden shouldn’t have any inputs. You don’t need to buy anything except a few tools, a little potting soil if you start plants indoors and some lime if your soil is acidic. Otherwise, most gardens are fine with only your own waste recycled as compost. Only add other things if you are absolutely sure they are necessary! Anytime you add extra fertilizer, mulch, manure, chemicals or anything else, you risk damaging your health, natural balances in your garden or the environment as a whole.