I want to write about soil chemistry. A very brief overview is as follows: I became interested in gardening when three years old and by the time I was a teenager I was putting as much (sometimes more) food on the table as my father. I had pretty much taken over the family garden and spent more time there than all of our other family members put together.
Winter Squash was my number one vegetable that I enjoyed growing the most, but there were others including sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, potatoes, radishes, rutabagas, watermelon, muskmelon, cucumbers and a few other miscellaneous crops. In my late teen years I discovered that I could use foliar feeding to shorten the maturity date of Winter Squash. In fact, one Australian variety was listed as a “100-day” maturity and I grew it in 85 days with a very vigorous foliar spray program. To back up a bit and explain, to the uninitiated: Foliar feeding is a method of providing plants with nutrients by dissolving them in water and spraying them directly onto the plant’s leaves.
At that point in time I knew very little about soil chemistry. All I had read about was the basic “NPK” which shows the amounts of the chemical elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the soil. But that oversimplification is severely short-sighted. Try to be a carpenter with only three tools. It doesn’t work. Now, fast forward to age 40. A friend introduced me to the Albrecht system of soil testing, but I just read the information and set it aside, which is what 99% of other gardeners would do as well. In 2004 I did my first soil test which was at a friend’s place of business, but it was more to satisfy my curiosity than anything else. Then in 2009 I did my first basic soil test (a Morgan soil test) for my own garden and started to apply the knowledge gained by it.
Finally, in 2011 I did an Albrecht-type soil test (actually a fairly close “copycat”, based on the Mehlich III extraction which is usually listed as “M3”) and discovered that the two tests were very different and did not agree with each other. I came up with a way of comparing the two soil tests to be able to use them as diagnostic tools to solve fertility issues (disease and insect problems usually) and increase the yield significantly. Both the flavor and shelf life of my garden produce were also improved.
A general rule of thumb is that I can usually increase the production by 1.5x to 2x of what it was before for home gardeners. The soil test that I use most often is now $32 plus postage. Soil amendments are extra, but they do pay for themselves in increased production and quality. Just off the top of my head from memory in 2020 I spent about $30 on soil amendments for a garden plot and produced about 1,100 pounds of Winter Squash. The $30 paid for itself about ten times over the added cost versus the increase in production. Certified Organic Winter Squash was $2.29 per pound, but the quality of my squash was significantly better than the squash sold in the grocery store.
Owners of prepper / survivalist properties are advised to have their soils tested! After a few basic rules and formulas are put to use the rest is pretty easy. My way of thinking of it is that once the mathematical formulas are comprehend the rest just seems to fall into place. (I’m a highschool dropout and a college dropout, too.) I will probably write an App for my phone to do the mathematical calculations and probably a JavaScript or perhaps PHP for desktop-based applications.
The soils here in this part of my state of Minnesota are some of the absolute worst that I’ve ever worked with. They are very low in Manganese. (An aside: That gets confused with Magnesium by most people, but is next to Iron on the periodic chart and is more similar to Iron than Magnesium) which is required for Calcium utilization in the body. Dr. Don Huber has done lots of research on this. I have developed an easy way to detect RoundUp chelation of Manganese with a comparative soil chemistry analysis. It’s actually easier than most people would think — but I’m getting off topic…
The soils in the American Redoubt are generally much better balanced than here in Minnesota, but there are generally deficiencies of some nutrients. For Redoubt residents specifically I would closely scrutinize Zinc (for immune health and drought resistance in plants) and Copper (for prevention of cardiomyopathy and cancer [gray hair also, which I’m reversing myself] and it helps with fungal disease in plants). [JWR Adds: Selenium also tends to be low, in most of the Redoubt region.]<
Manganese helps with viruses in plants as well as chlorophyll production. (Zinc and Magnesium do, as well). Several years ago I mentioned in SurvivalBlog that I had “lab work” experience.
Back to foliar feeding… I generally start foliar feeding my plants on day one. If I were in a contest I would be doing that 6 days out of 7. I rest the 7th day and so does garden work as well. As it is I like to foliar feed them as often as I can, like every other day or every third day. Soil deficiencies can be corrected in the growing plants and since I let them compost in place (I don’t remove any plant material from the garden … it stays where it grew) the small amount of plant residue will eventually enrich the soil. If my budget allows I do a dry broadcast soil amendment as well. The last several years that was not possible except for Soft Rock Phosphate which I already had on hand. There are a number of Phosphate mines in Idaho so your P levels might already be sufficient or perhaps high. Once the P levels get too high it is very difficult (and very slow – decades) to correct that problem. Most Amish run into this problem without even knowing it because they put manure on their gardens like it was worth it’s weight in Gold, which is not the case at all. That is the number one problem the Amish have with soil chemistry is too much P. Too much P ties up the Zinc and then when the Flu season (or other experiments…) comes along, the people get sick.
I haven’t had the bug for about 40 years or more. It goes without saying that I didn’t even know that C was an issue except friends younger and older were getting it. [… think of lab work again… many decades in the past however… ] About 75% of my garden this year was just grass / lawn a few months ago. I sodbusted it by hand and with very heavy foliar feeding am making it productive in its first year. The organic matter is quite low and that is affecting some varieties, but others are growing like there is an ample amount.
I’m including a picture of two garden plots. (Click to expand and read the details.) These are both Potato patches, to be more specific. The one on the left was wiped out by Colorado Potato Beetles and the one on the right, which was my own garden, had zero bugs and zero insect damage. The distance between the two was 2.08 miles as measured off satellite images via Web Soil Servey (USDA) and both were near Bemidji, Minnesota when I lived up there. I’ve moved since then, but there is still a garden spot where the one on the right is. My best friend lives there and he is 90 years old. ]
You should notice that the pH in the failed plot was 5.6 and in my garden it was 7.2 which most people think is too high for potatoes. That is not true. Soil pH has less to do with “acid-loving plants” than most “experts” from the University are aware. Blueberries are not acid-loving plants either even though they think so due to flawed information. They are acid-tolerant plants which is a huge difference. That is not the same. Azaleas and Rhododendrons are not acid-loving plants either. 95% of what is taught at the University about this subject is taught in error. I’ve proven that many times and so have other Albrecht soil consultants / researchers that have written about this before me.