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Old April 20, 2014   #10
b54red
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Alabama
Posts: 7,068
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I think your ph is too high to grow really good tomatoes but mine got that high a few years ago and I have brought it down by adding lots of cottonseed meal, pine bark and using no liming products at all. Since you already have a surplus of nutrients except maybe nitrogen your soil might benefit from adding a lot of pine bark fines but they will lower your nitrogen levels so it might work to add some cottonseed meal at the same time to balance out the loss of nitrogen. The pine bark fines will help with the compaction of the soil and cottonseed meal will draw any nearby earthworms. You might also want to check on those boron levels and see if they are dangerously high for plants. I have been told that if you ever get too much boron it will negatively affect many plants.

A friend of mine whose phosphate levels got extremely high was told by the university specialist that planting hairy vetch is a good way to take out some of the phosphorous; but not to till it back in or use it as a mulch but rather to mow it and bag it so it can be removed along with the phosphorous it sucked out of the soil. Do not add any cow manure to your garden as that is how his P levels got so high according to the agricultural scientist he consulted.

I have to till my beds every year or tree roots take over but by using bark or wood mulches my soil stays soft all year and doesn't pack down. I still add organic mater but no cow manure anymore. I do add my own compost full of worms and rotted straw along with cottonseed meal and alfalfa meal every year and my worm population is huge. Years ago when I used the old bagged commercial fertilizers I had few worms and my soil would compact terribly just a few weeks after tilling.

Bill
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