This month’s blog is going to cover a topic that I usually do once a year. Soil testing. Personally, soil testing is important because I have sandy soil. My first soil test five years ago revealed a lot of deficiency in my soil. Mainly nitrogen and some micro nutrients. Boron, magnesium, zinc, and iron. Last year’s test showed improvements and yes, my soil is getting better.
I’ve been testing my soil yearly to see how much of an improvement is going on down there. The first two years I used blood meal and bone meal to amend my nitrogen and phosphorus deficiency. I found places online that offered the micronutrients I need. The issue with online orders is the shipping charges. Starting on the third year I started implementing cover crops into my garden. The past couple of years have been experimenting with different methods of sowing the cover crop seeds. By far the best method I have experimented with is using the Earthway seeder. This seeder is amazing, I know many people out there start with this seeder because it is cost friendly. I will cover my cover crops in a later post because that is a huge topic and I can go on and on about it.
placeholder://In the beginning I would test in the spring. Last year I switched to fall. In my research I have found that the organic amendments such as blood and bone meal will take a few months to start breaking down. So it seems that if I test in the spring time and I add my amendments they don’t start working until harvest time. Just different perspectives from many farmers that have been doing this for so long.
I will share my test results when I get them back from the lab. See what we need to amend this year. I hope you all enjoyed this month’s post.