Soil Test - pH and NPK Nitrogen Phosphorus and Potassium

1. thanks
2. Home nutrient testing kits are relatively useless. Also most soils high in organics test low in nutrients, because they are tied up until the plants need them!
3. Hello there!
   For immediate help pull wood chips back add composted rabbit manure.
   If you purchase some comfrey online ... It's inexpensive... Plant them... It grows fast ...and do the chop and drop method of the leaves and stems.
   Research comfrey used as fertilizer online.... I started my garden for all the same reasons as you did !
   I add lots of fall leaves and grass clippings too... It helps also..just keep layering ... Wishing you luck!
4. Appreciate and admire your efforts.
5. just look @ your video it was very informative & i thank you. i will look at your other films after i send this, but here is something that worked for me & it's all homemade. take u'r compost material put it in a barrel or container with an output. then run water through it catch the output then dilute it 1/3 to 2/3 water. hope i gave you some helpful ideas. the mixture is called texas tea if i'm right B.E.F. ENTERPRISES
6. Hi there J&J Acres. Could you tell me where you are located? I am in south UK but have family in CT. Now i feel that it might be worth while composting for your household. I do that here at home. Last year my wife and me produced about 500 kilos of waste foods, shredded paper and burnt ground coffee suds in about 9 months. This has produced wonderful nutrient rich compost which i add to the soil. I have not tested the NPK as yet, but its in the pipeline once our winter / and rain season passes. I know you have a heck more land there than us, but you could ask neighbours to put their waste to one side for you to increase yield. And share any crops you have with them. The chickens waste will definitely help with breaking down your waste matter, as well as anything you can get from local farmers such as cow or horse manure. Its a good way of putting back into the land what we take out. And your plants will be happier, produce more flower and greater yields. Once you have created your own compost, then test it... I bet you your results will be different, then you can water down the compost and mix it into your land. Hope this is of help
7. This is the 21st century - surely there must be some simple electronic device that one can stick into a sample of soil and gain an accurate reading of NPK. What are they doing in China? Surely they could make one of these and sell it for $50! :-)
8. food for thought* - you want to know how you might increase the availability of nutrients in your soil without having to purchase organic nutrients. 
   
   My answer is that you study up on compost teas, bacterial vs. fungal recipes, and the NPK's of raw materials such as banana peels, cantaloupe rinds, and spinach as base ingredients for brewing your own nutrient solutions. i brew my own quite frequently and find that the raw materials i mentioned are robust sources of nutrients. the thing about brewing a tea is, when a large quantity of fresh greens are fed to the microbes within the brewing process that the entire solution will become ammonia rich. i know the occurrence as a stage in the brewing process but have found no advice on the topic of brewing nutrient solutions. What i do is simply bottle the concentrated nutrient rich solution in 1 gallon jugs and store them for 1+ years. Doing so seems to finish the process by allowing the solution to go anaerobic because a halt is brought to creating ammonia. Smell tests and container burping indicate that the solution is being rid of the ammonia and i know things are getting good when i can smell the solution beginning to become slightly rancid (which does not last for long). Somewhat of a nutrient rich fragrance begins to develop as the rancid odor disappears. My nutrients smell good (for what their odor is worth) and are highly concentrated. Thickness or PPM of the solution is increased whenever i brew manure. Fresh manure like goat, rabbit, or deer (pellet type feces) is okay for this process (others may be too) but only when beneficial micro-organisms are introduced to the brew in abundance to get things going. 
   
   In all actuality i would begin amending your soil with manures and get a jump start on brewing some compost tea (bacterial recipe), as the microbe rich liquid compost will inoculate your soil and begin to break micro and macro nutrients down into soluble nutrients ready for uptake. There may be plenty of P and K in your soil already which may need to be unlocked so that your soil test readings give you a more accurate result of what's in the soil. Anyhow, that's basically where i go first to enrich my soil. Farming in the woods, you have everything that you need to enrich your soil and you can easily culture your own lacto bacilli for your compost teas around the base of any tree by digging a hole and placing in it a wide flat container with dry rice and some water and then covering the top with a towel, or rather something like a towel and then topping it with very fine soil (1/4 - 1/2 inch) that was dug to make the hole. the objective is to keep the towel tight so that it doesnt sag into the water and rice due to the weight of the soil. the mold that grows on the rice is the pro-biotic/beneficial micro-organism/lacto bacilli which is also found in your intestinal tract to aid in breaking solids into uptakable forms of nutrients just like our plants need. =) 
   
   good luck and enjoy
9. Those meters suck, inaccurate and worthless. Send your soil to a lab people, it's accurate and only $10.
10. When you are mulching your branches make sure they have leaves on them they increase the nitrogen and make the mulch break down faster. You could also use grass clipping I think they increase nitrogen.
11. also look in to integrating chickens to the land adding compost and wood chips to plots you want to farm on this will increase the micronutrients.  Doing so will reduce or eliminate cost of feeding the chicken with store bought feed. this is also in line with permaculture.       
12. look in to Hugelkultur and a man by the name of  Sepp Holzer.  this is inline with permaculture.  should be a good start.  
13. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KDQN4TA order your ph test trips today! Right off Amazon
14. WELL MADE compost is your best investment of time it is well rounded and improves soil tilth. Buy a compost thermometer (Reo temp is a good one) and put 60%green 40% brown evenly mixed. EVERY day temp the mid of the pile and turn it when the temp reach 150ish. Oxygen is the most important part. Make sure the pile is moist but not streaming when you squeeze some in your hand. Partially cover pile to protect it from rain or cold but remember air exchange very important do not air seal it off. If it is below 70 outside doing this in a barn is your best bet or making sure your pile is very big as the center gets hotter as the bigger the pile is.5×5 is a good size. When you turn your pile and it stays at ambient temp it's done.
    
    Remember those test are for soluble nutrients and nature does not waste anything she locks it up in the form of microorganisms or biomass in general. take care of your micro organisms for their your bank. it is no mistake that you have large trees behind you and they didn't get that big with no nutrients. Using compost you can speed up nutrient cycling and make available when you want nutrients to your plants, as the microbes break down the biomass.
    
    Check out dr. Elaine Ingham on you tube
15. My recommendation:
    1.  Realize that your test results are better than you seem to understand in your vid.
    2.  Assuming your test results are:  pH=~6.8-7, N=0, P=low, K=med
    Then all you need to do is increase your N, P, & K (a little bit)
    
    3.  For this growing season, do the following:
    a.  add finished manure compost (6-12 months old) to your garden. 
    b.  add urine to your garden. (0.76 fluid oz. of urine applied to 1 sf (square foot) of soil provides 10 ppm of N).  Note:  The amount of urine will depend on how much finished manure compost you add to your soil, how much nutrient is already in your soil, & how much each of your plants requires (e.g. Total N needs for:  beans=~20 ppm, tomatoes=30 ppm, corn=60 ppm, potatoes=105 ppm).  Note:  large Total N amounts are often added in 2 applications (e.g.:  2/3 at pre-plant/plant/transplant and 1/3 after the plant flowers).
    
    Here's a manure application guide that should be helpful to you:  http://learningstore.uwex.edu/assets/pdfs/A3392.pdf
    You may have to search the internet for data on the specific types of manure that you have available, but basically that guide will provide you with other information that you will find essential.
    
    Make sure to pay attention to available nutrient levels that are provided by applied manure.  Nutrients that are available are those that can be easily dissolved & therefore uptakeable by plants.  Nutrients that are locked-up in organic matter take time to dissolve & are therefore not immediately available to plant roots for plant nutrition.  Urine contains urea.  Urea is quickly available for plant nutrient uptake, but it only lasts for 4 to 6 weeks (which is ok, because it is free, easily obtained, & easy to apply).
    
    4.  Start composting now & through the fall & winter.
    I suggest you make a pile big enough so that you have at least 4 inches of finished compost for your next spring garden.  Here's an excellent guide:  http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/diy-instructions/hot-compost-composting-in-18-days/
    I also suggest you start worm composting for:  worm tea (excellent liquid foilar fertilizer), worm manure (excellent soil fertilizer), & worms (excellent to add to your garden in the fall, winter, & spring)
    
    5.  Cover your finished garden with wood mulch.
    If you have shredded wood mulch or chips, you could make a 4"-6" deep layer over your garden after this seasons garden is done & then remove the wood before planting your next spring garden.  Wood chips provide excellent decomposition products for your soil, excellent ground cover for moisture retention, & excellent space for soil bugs/worms to flourish.
    
    6.  Repeat the above process year after year & you'll have outstanding garden soil!
16. Tough call, chickens is a great way to do it. You could off course cheat and buy some horse manure from around. But then you will have to work the soil. I personally stay away from store-bought fertilizers.
17. I'm wondering how accurate these tests really are. My broken down wood chip soil tested very high in phosphorus and potassium. I did a video on it several months back. I had sent my soil to my local agricultural center. 
18. People are so focused on npk but it is the trace minerals and beneficial fungi that allow the npk to be take up by the plants. Look into endo and ecto inoculants. Go to the smiling gardeners website for info about that. He explains everything nicely. If You have a pond with fish you can make your own wonderful fishfert. You blend a whole fish bones and all,however it can be strong, and needs diluted if it is going directly to plants. If it is just going to soil with no plants I'm sure it'd be fine. Again, back to Eden film and the smiling gardeners website are two good organic resources.
19. You just want a top dressing,not a soil mixture, now compost, that you can till into. Also look into adding trace minerals.rock dust is great for this.
20. And if you mulch with wood chips whatever you do DONT till it into the soil. You will tie up all your nutrients in to the wood