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Old September 9, 2019   #16
AKmark
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If I ever see BER, I will determine if it is because of watering or if it is induced by high K, or MgSO4. If it is the latter, I will turn off the fertilizer injector for a couple waterings and just use the CaNO3. This usually resets the equilibrium and works like a charm. I always run high K anyway, it does bite back now and then. Anyway...
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Old September 11, 2019   #17
PureHarvest
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Everything looks pretty good.
Do not overlook Mark's point about even watering for calcium translocation.
The only data point that confuses me is your OM %.
That is off the chart.
Not trying to make you feel bad, but I wonder if your sample was faulty. Perhaps you sampled too many areas where compost was the major component of the profile.
Or, you have added so much compost to your soil, that it is in fact the majority of your soil at this point.
OM (organic matter that is fully decomposed, which is what the OM test is, not organic material like leaves or manure) can hold 3 times the amount of elements as the clay colloid in soil. This means that your soil has the capacity to hold a lot of elements/nutrients. This also means you need a lot more of everything to saturate all the surface area that you have. So, perhaps you seemingly have "enough" of calcium etc, but it is not being released into solution for root absorption. Plant roots exude acids to etch the elements off the soil colloids and put them into solution for uptake.
This brings us back to even watering, needing microbial diversity, and needing a diverse population of roots from plants other than just tomato roots.
In short, I'd get a cover crop cocktail in this fall that has at number of species from different families in them (grass, brassica, legume). Cereal rye, tillage radish, crimson clover would be a good start. There are so many more...turnip, mustard, rape, wheat, barley, oats, vetch, triticale, annual alfalfa.
Green shoots with roots 12 months of the year. Don't till in spring, rather mow and plant into residue, or mow and cover with tarps etc to smother, then plant into residue.
Piling leaves etc on top is not even close to the same effect as living roots as far as carbon building and soil health. See Carbonomics on youtube by Keith Berns.

Last edited by PureHarvest; September 11, 2019 at 09:27 AM.
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Old September 11, 2019   #18
lubadub
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lubadub View Post
The reason my OM is so high is that my soil is about 98% silt. It was once more or less a river bottom. There is almost no sand or clay. I added the OM in order to get my cation exchange content up. I may have overdone it and will be cutting back some on my annual addition of compost this year. My homemade compost is very high in carbon and low in nitrogen as it is probably closer to being leaf mold than compost. This fall I will be getting my usual soil tests and will take into account that my calcium level may be a bit on the low side though I thought it was a little high. I am trying to use organic nutrients this year and intend to put most of them on in the fall to give the life in my soil to break them down, work them into the top 2 or 3 inches of soil, put on a thin layer of my compost and then cover the entire area with a tarp to prevent leeching until the spring. In the spring I will loosen the soil with my long fork and put my plants in by way of planting holes. After everything is in and the ground is warmed up a bit I plan to then mulch the area using straw and then I will install my drip watering system. I grow mostly tomatoes and will support my plants using long pieces of rebar, 8 feet with two feet above the ground, with twine stretched from pole to pole and tomato clips and twine to actually support the plants. This is the plan. This winter I will try to get more knowledgeable about soil nutrition and soil life. I need to better understand how the nutrients can interfere with one another if in excess. I have probably been more concerned about the deficiency side of things. During the growing season I will probably put on some additional water soluble organic nutrients in dilute amounts either by way of a drench or by foliar feeding. When the blossoms start to come on my tomato plants I will probably do another tissue analysis just out of curiosity.
This should explain some of it.
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Old March 25, 2020   #19
lubadub
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bumpStill wondering what Pureharvest has to say.
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