Doug McEvers

Your calcium to magnesium ratio is about 8 to 1, the standard ideal is about 6 to 1 (Albrecht Method), so I would not consider magnesium high. Certain soils do not test accurately with some testing methods I have found. Might be long standing soil labs with good credentials but my higher pH soil did not test at all accurately, so I switched soil labs. Plant tissue tests are far more valuable in finding out what your soil has to offer or does not. Every renowned soil consultant says to test plant tissue to find out what is in the plant and available from your soil. We have a Sweet 16 apple tree here that I feel got some chemical drift a few years ago. It had regular leaves and some smaller leaves and not many blossoms or apples. I have been giving it plenty of water in dry years so I think I can rule water out. What I did was a balanced fertilization including chicken pellets, gypsum, a mix of what I call soil life starter fertilizer and Soil Biological. This past summer the Sweet 16 had a very nice crop of large apples, enough for friends, family and the local food pantry. My TLC appears to have brought the tree back to a productive state, I think. No more chemicals on this farm so these mysterious tree maladies are over, I hope.

Not a soil expert but your Ca to Mg ratio might suggest some dolomite limestone to raise somewhat your soil pH and bring the ratio closer to the ideal.

I know nothing of roses except the climbing roses we planted many years ago here in western MN are still very robust. They tolerate our cold climate and have been very prolific the last 2 years with much above normal rainfall. Got them from Bachmans in MSP. They bloom for a long time and have had very little care except cutting out the dead material. Built a cedar trellis for them when starting out, still stands strong today. For flowers on this farm, it is survival of the fittest, high maintenance does not cut it.

In my mind, hollyhock is a 2-year plant here, may be wrong about this. I see many smaller plants showing up amidst the blooming plants in July and August. I was assuming these small hollyhocks will become next year's blooming plants, wonder how to prove this? Also, maybe our hollyhocks here would grow from seed and bloom the same year in a warmer climate? We are in western Minnesota, so soils generally do not start warming until May. Some hollyhock science is needed. For hollyhock bed management I never harvest all of the seed and will wait until seeds start shattering before collecting the stalks and seedheads. I believe in local source seed being used for restoration projects and will not send native prairie seed more than 200 or so miles from here. I have no similar restrictions on ornamentals as long as they are not considered invasive.

Judith,

I have no pictures, but they are big and colorful. They require no care and self-seed each year, my recent fertilization has caused them to expand. Might be my claim to fame, world's largest hollyhock patch. I would call them old fashioned hollyhocks, dating back to the start of this farm (1880) possibly. I would imagine my great grandfather (Chris) was more interested in farming than flowers early on but after he married great grandmother (Marie) I bet the flowers came soon after. I have a gallon bag of seed from 2024 and have yet to thresh out the 2025 crop. Would be happy to send them out to anyone interested here. We can't have too many flowers !!

We have hollyhocks here on our farm, have been in the same spot for years. Ours seem to be a 2 year plant, smaller plants show up in mid to late summer and that I believe are next year's flowering hollyhocks. They are tough as I have burned the bed in spring the last couple of years to slow down grasses and clean up leaves. Hollyhocks come on strong even if they got singed a bit. The site where they grow is about the hardest, dryest soil on our farm. I have watered them on dry years and the water, 300 gallons at a time just vanishes. Our hollyhocks have been in the family for as long as anyone can remember.  All of my great aunts had flower gardens, some with white picket fences and of course many hollyhocks. I save the seed from ours in the fall and have been giving them to friends and family. They do like balanced fertilization I have found; some were about 7' tall this year. We have 4 or so main colors, white, a deep red, many shades of pink and one that is kind of a light lavender, this is my favorite. I cut the stalks in the fall with the seed heads and then store overwinter in a 36 gallon garbage container. I have a seed debearder for native grass seed and run the hollyhocks through to thresh out the seeds. Long live the hollyhock !!

This is also a good product, have used it for years on our garden. Quite affordable, 1 gallon will treat a lot of territory. Found out about it years ago at an Acres USA Conference. I was in the exhibition area and asked a farmer there did he use any of the products on display. He said yes, Natur's Way Soil Biological, had been using it for years. His brother farming right across the road did not use it, he said the difference in soil hardness and tilth was very noticeable between the treated and untreated farm.

https://naturs-way.com/soil.htm

This link will give you information on plant tissue testing normals.

https://agsci.psu.edu/aasl/plant-analysis/plant-tissue-total-analysis/interpretive-nutrient-levels-for-plant-analysis

Plant tissue testing is designed to tell us what is plant available from the soil. If it is in the plant tissue, the soil has made it available. I did a plant tissue test in 2024 on tillering volunteer oats, the test told me my soil was in quite good balance after the first season of our transition to biological farming. My former soil lab said I was short of nearly everything. A $22.00 test gave me peace of mind and a new path forward in understanding our soil here. Plant tissue testing is as much as is possible, a real time test, giving one the opportunity to make fertility corrections while the crop is still progressing.

Feed the soil to feed the plant !! To this I think we could add, to feed the people or critters. This is what I read so many years ago in Acres USA. A soil that is low in nutrients will grow food that is also low in nutrients. Never thought of this before but it changed my thinking on soil, a great discovery. We really need to get more information on nutrient density for the foods we eat. Stands to reason the more biologically and nutrient diverse the soil is, the better the produce quality will be. We lack informational labeling on our food, by design I believe. Really great produce should taste good and store well.

Got our soil test results back from Cornell Soil Lab, wow, so much great, new information. The 6 samples I sent in range from 7.2 to 7.7 pH. Yea !! My previous standard soil tests always came back in the low 8's. We did put on about 550 pounds per acre of gypsum in 2025 and this may have been partly responsible for the pH reduction although gypsum is thought to be pH neutral. This gypsum came from a mine in Ft. Dodge, IA and is known to be very pure. What I did notice in our garden this summer when using this gypsum if I got it on the leaves it could burn. I wonder if the sulfate in this gypsum is a bit faster reacting than is the calcium, hence the better pH readings? As it turns out we have adequate sulfur in our soils, some a bit excessive, maybe due in part to the added gypsum in 2025. Have used a lot of gypsum in the garden over the years, all in pelletized form, so the gypsum fines from Ft. Dodge are I think, a valuable nutrient source.

The good news is our soils are working biologically with 100% available phosphorus on all tests. No shortages in micronutrients (trace elements) so we will do no soil correctives this season. Will fertilize for the crop being planted with the idea the higher organic matter soils will have more ENR, estimated nitrogen release. We have a good way to go on building our soil organic matter (ranging from 1 to 5%), but the basics seem to be met, fertility wise. A living soil should soon follow.

We have the good fortune here of having some native prairie remnants to use as our reference soil. These soils are in equilibrium and give us a good guideline for nutrient balancing and potential soil organic matter improvement.

I rely very much on soil temperature to decide when and what to plant. 7:00 am in the morning is the suggested time to take readings as the solar gain will have cooled and the deeper soil will equalize temperature with the shallower soil. Cold stress is real, more for some plants than others, even shows up in indoor transplants, tomatoes for instance, if they get chilled. I would be very interested to hear from others here on how they get vigorous tomato transplants, mine always seem a bit spindly. They turn into decent tomatoes when put in the garden but are very wind prone early on. I have started doing a tomato volunteer area in the garden, they come up later than I would like but the vigor far surpasses that of my transplants. I like WI 55 tomatoes for my climate in western MN.