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I used to think I was a legit 'natural' gardener until my soil test came back
For years I bragged about using only compost and never adding anything synthetic to my vegetable beds. Then my neighbor (who teaches a master gardener program) convinced me to do a proper soil test through the county extension office. The results showed my pH was way off and I was literally deficient in 4 major nutrients. I had to admit my 'pure' approach was actually starving my tomatoes. Has anyone else had to eat crow about their gardening methods after a simple test?
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the_jana25d ago
Right? I read somewhere that soil can look fine but be totally dead underneath!
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the_lisa25d ago
Right, so much for that "100% organic, my hands are pure" sticker I gave myself. My test came back and I basically had a dirt desert for my tomatoes to cry in. Now I'm just a humble dump-and-stir gardener with a bag of bone meal, no crown required.
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joel_clark3725d ago
...and the funny thing is, bone meal won't even fix the problem if your soil biology is completely shot. Everyone talks about adding nutrients back but nobody mentions that those little microbes and fungi are what actually break everything down for the roots to use. You could dump a whole bag of bone meal in there but if the soil is dead it's just gonna sit there like a brick in the dirt. I swear the real secret nobody talks about is getting the living stuff going first, then worrying about the minerals.
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