Ah, not that big a deal. Maybe I should offer a Slownickel Mix?
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Slownickel lounge, pull up a chair. CEC interpretation
- Thread starter slownickel
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Ah, not that big a deal. Maybe I should offer a Slownickel Mix?
I would use boric acid unless you are a die hard organic and want to use sodium borate (borax). 0.2 to 0.3 grams of boric acid should be ok. I would water first, then apply this 6 quarts to the soil and then water it in a bit.
How big a pot you going to do this on? Does it have B applied already? Is there Ca applied already?
Really dislike spouting recipes. Do you have a Spectrum analysis by chance?
Pots are 5-10 gallon.
Mix is mostly peat and perlite. I make 3 cubic feet and amend with:
EWC 6 cups
Blood meal 1.5 cups
Bone Meal 3 cups
Kelp Meal 1.5 cups
Hardwood Ash 1 cup
Neem Meal 1.5 cups
Biochar 1 cup
Diatomaceous Earth 3 cups
Oyster shell flour 2 cups
Gypsum 2 cups
Glacial Rock dust 1 cup
Sul Po Mag .5 cup
No testing, I reuse the soil for ornamentals and mix fresh for cannabis.
Based on what I've read here, I already think I have to much K and have stopped watering with pond water that contains bicarbonates.
I get that most of what you do is more relevant to in ground crops measured by acreage but help a container gardener out please!!!
Many ways to skin that cat, but I'm curious why you dump that soil. organic soils generally improve with time, maybe do some topdressings for the next runs, but a lot of the rock dusts will just be starting to be useful and the microlife will already be in place in numbers, theoretically.
I use 1 part of soil and 1 part of distilled water mix wait for some time take EC reading from the meter.
I got different readings if the soil is already wet( rainy day) and if soil is dry.
So lets say I gotta get rid of a certain meq of K. My thinking is I need to provide the proper amount sulfate to tie it up and wash it away. I tried using an equal meq of Ca from gypsum but that don't work.
I can get close but not precise yet.
Anyways...in coco I have some plants going into week 3 with Ca sap 5x K sap. I get "room to fertigate" now. Ima pound it with mkp.
TnTLabs
Active member
thats normal, less water, higher ec...
hence why its never good to let plants dry out completely!
from my understanding, one should use moist soil,
taken from the root zone, without upsetting the plant too much.. thats how i do it anyway... stir couple of min, let it settle 20min, stir again and then wait a for a few more and take a reading, then repeat that 30min later and read again.. most prob the ec will be a touch higher .. in general readings will be more precise the longer you wait.. an hr is sufficient
TnTLabs
Active member
so you are saying coco & gypsum go well?!
I have an ec probe, so I do it a little different. However, my meter seems to read higher slightly after a watering, as appose to waiting. I would think the water is the conductor, so less water would have more resistance right? Trying to understand why I am getting different results as you.
TnTLabs
Active member
figured.. i guess you could get away with it if you use coco in a soil as a amendment..
you doing multiple feeds a day i hope..
Lightweight
Member
Hey slownickel, awhile back you said you were experimenting with citric acid to acidify your soil. How did that work out? I've been using it for awhile and I thought I was hitting the soil pretty well with it, but it hasn't made a difference on pH according to soil tests. My pH probe shows the pH drop after I water with it and then the pH climbs back up over the next 24 hours or so. Anyway, just curious on your results. Maybe I need to hit it harder to get the soil pH down a bit more?
Lightweight
Member
So we don't have a lot of choices for topsoil here in Maui. There's only a few places to get it and I sent in a couple samples. If any of you guys have any input on which you would pick, if you would pick either at all, I'd appreciate it. They both have pros and cons.
Topsoil #1:
CEC 14.31
pH 6.1
Organic Matter 9.3%
*It's a little low on calcium, but not too bad.
*It has an excess of 2.23x Mg.
*The K, Na, Si and Cu are about perfect
*The Fe is pretty good too
*P is really low
*S, B, and Zn are all low (shouldn't be hard to correct though)
*And the kicker that is really the only reason I'm hesitant to get some of this soil is that the Mn is 11.73x of what I would generally shoot for. I'd be shooting for about 70ppm and it has 818ppm. I'm just not sure if that level of Mn would kill plants or not.
Topsoil #2 (it's actually a topsoil, sand, compost mix):
CEC 25.08
pH 7.8
OM 19.54%
*It has a little less than half the Ca it should. About 39% of the CEC
*Mg is 2.28x's, K is 5.46x's and Na is 7.53x's what I would shoot for. I'm only shooting for 0.5% Na so that might sound worse than it is.
*It has a little more Fe than I'd want ideally
*It has a pretty good amount of P, S, B and Si
*It's a low on Zn and really low on Cu.
Obviously I'm not worried about deficiencies for the most part, but some of the excesses in either of those soils are questionable. And just FYI, I'm amending for 85% Ca saturation and I'm going to be using this soil to start my plants in pots.
There's only one other place I'd possibly get topsoil from so I can check them out if either of these don't seem like a good choice, but it's kind of a pain the butt to get it from that other place.
Thanks for any help braddahs!
Topsoil #1:
CEC 14.31
pH 6.1
Organic Matter 9.3%
*It's a little low on calcium, but not too bad.
*It has an excess of 2.23x Mg.
*The K, Na, Si and Cu are about perfect
*The Fe is pretty good too
*P is really low
*S, B, and Zn are all low (shouldn't be hard to correct though)
*And the kicker that is really the only reason I'm hesitant to get some of this soil is that the Mn is 11.73x of what I would generally shoot for. I'd be shooting for about 70ppm and it has 818ppm. I'm just not sure if that level of Mn would kill plants or not.
Topsoil #2 (it's actually a topsoil, sand, compost mix):
CEC 25.08
pH 7.8
OM 19.54%
*It has a little less than half the Ca it should. About 39% of the CEC
*Mg is 2.28x's, K is 5.46x's and Na is 7.53x's what I would shoot for. I'm only shooting for 0.5% Na so that might sound worse than it is.
*It has a little more Fe than I'd want ideally
*It has a pretty good amount of P, S, B and Si
*It's a low on Zn and really low on Cu.
Obviously I'm not worried about deficiencies for the most part, but some of the excesses in either of those soils are questionable. And just FYI, I'm amending for 85% Ca saturation and I'm going to be using this soil to start my plants in pots.
There's only one other place I'd possibly get topsoil from so I can check them out if either of these don't seem like a good choice, but it's kind of a pain the butt to get it from that other place.
Thanks for any help braddahs!
Lightweight
Member
slownickel, how do you figure out or what kind of equation do you use to figure out what levels iron and manganese should be in a soil. Besides having 85% Ca saturation and some adjusting on Mg, K, and Na I just use the recommendations in Michael Astera's book for everything else. I don't think you've ever explained (in this thread at least) how you figure out what Fe and Mn levels should be. Maybe I missed it, but I doubt it. I've followed this thread from the beginning and I'm sure I would've remembered. I'd like to try out your ideal Fe/Mn ratio and see what kind of magic happens.
Lightweight
Member
And to finish off my machine gun posting. What amount of Metalosate Cu and Zn powder would you guys use for foliar feeding?
Lightweight
Member
I didn't ask you Jidoka, but I appreciate your input. I didn't know if you were rocking the inverted Mn/Fe ratio or not otherwise I would have asked you too.
I don't have any sap testers so I'm not sure how I'll figure out how to get the right levels of Mn and Fe in my soil without potentially causing a toxicity of Mn or a deficiency of Fe.
Obviously there's a ton of variables that can't be accounted for remotely, but I would assume there's got to be a ballpark equation that you or slownickel or anyone with experience in this regards use to get close to an ideal ratio.
I don't have any sap testers so I'm not sure how I'll figure out how to get the right levels of Mn and Fe in my soil without potentially causing a toxicity of Mn or a deficiency of Fe.
Obviously there's a ton of variables that can't be accounted for remotely, but I would assume there's got to be a ballpark equation that you or slownickel or anyone with experience in this regards use to get close to an ideal ratio.
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