Chris Barr

You guys got a few posts ahead of I'll try to catch up here!

I Think Redhawk and I on the same plane of thought, just a different perspective of how we convey it.

I look at soil science a bit differently then many Agronomist have in the past 90 years or so, it's apparent they viewed it from a "chemical" balance perspective on dead soil pushed by the fertilizer industry, I do not share those traditional views. While I do focus on "mineral" balance, I look at soil science as coexisting symbiotic living entity the way mother nature has always been. When I give recommendations for mineral balance I always do so with the addition of organic amendments, but mineral balance is just the start we have to have microbiology for it to work and through tests and observations I believe the microbiology is better jump started and exponentially thrives when the minerals are balanced to create the least antagonisms. There is only so much available mineral nutrients in an amendment source, once plants have consumed whats available we need the microbiology to keep things churning and break down those sources so they are available for use by all the living entities in the soil community, unless one wants to use chemical fertilizers on dead soil.

There is a lot of room for forgiveness in living soils and while I do emphasize mineral balance, I feel the "big three" elements that are usually overlooked are carbon, oxygen, and calcium, with an available supply of these three elements plants, mycology, and organisms will still thrive in a some what mineral deficient or out of balance environment.  

Angelika, I would bet you can grow broccoli in your location, the most common problem with broccoli not producing is "bolting" a result of a hot root zone, mulch and keep the root zone under 80F. As far a book to read I don't think there is a single book that can sum it up, each one has good points and bad points and like Redhawk said we're just cusping into an era of agronomy/agriculture that is realizing they been doing it all wrong for so many years. Here are some good authors to start with, William A. Albrecht, Carey Reams, William R. Jackson, Paul Stamets (Mycelium Running), while they all have good info none of them are a 100% right.

Chris

Bryant RedHawk wrote:Angelika, there are many ways to make your adjustments some better than others when you are trying for Ionic improvement, in the case of Phosphorus the usual is sodium phosphate but one of the best is fluorapatite, Ca  5  F(PO4) 3,  which is the raw, mined mineral that most of our phosphorus comes from.
If you can locate a source of that mineral, you will be able to bring the P and K into balance with a simple single application.

Redhawk

Hey Bryant, I know I'm new to posting here and I've been reading a lot of your writings on soil (I agree with the vast majority of what you write) but I respectfully disagree with the addition of P in this scenario. With a K base saturation @ 7.11% and 728 m3-ppm K, I would say they need wash out about 318 ppm K with the addition of 5600 Kg/Ha of gypsum. K base saturation should come down to about 4% with a K/P ratio of 1:1 and Ca% to come up to a more ideal 75-80% @ 4200ppm and Mg down to 10% base saturation.

Where K is at now would cause an antagonism with P disrupting the uptake of P while further reducing the available Ca%; I would be inclined to believe with m3-ppm Ca at 3630 it would likely be less then 2000 ppm available Ca in the soil, but we couldn't know for sure without a Ca AA8.2 test.

BTW, the ppm to kg/ ha i found in Solomon's worksheets he writes: 1 ppm = 2 pounds/acre = 2.24 kg/ha - do I get something wrong?

I am not overly familiar with his worksheet but I have read some of his work though, I disagree with his boron not to exceed 4.48Kg/Ha, I've seen B upwards 10-12ppm or 25 Kg/ha with no issue of boron toxicity but this has been soil with Ca levels 80-85% and over 10,000 ppm Ca. The conversion factor is right though, 1lb/acre=1.12Kg/Ha, 1ppm=2lbs/acre is under the assumption that the soil bulk density is equivalent to an acre furrow slice weighing 2 million pounds.

I attached the results of my calculations.

Chris

Angelika Maier wrote:
Another question: base saturation of elements are given in % - per cent of what? Is it the whole exchange points?
Further Solomon writes P (Phosphrous) should be equal to K (Potassium). What comes first P or K or do I raise my P to the amount of K - this would mean 506ppm P to the amount of 728ppm K?
I don't trust my own calculations and I really want to get it right!

The % is the base distribution of cations, Ca, Mg, K, Na, and hydrogen depending on pH.  

I prefer to see base distribution % at Ca 80%, Mg 12%, K 4%, Na 1-2%, with the remaining 2-3% as H.

As far as P/K ratio 1:1 is were you want to be, but that depends on your base saturation % of K? If your K % is above 8 you may want to push out some K with Ca before you try to balance your P/K ratio.

Do you have test results you can post, I can help run the numbers?