Thread: Soil Test
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Old September 1, 2016   #71
PureHarvest
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Location: Mid-Atlantic right on the line of Zone 7a and 7b
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Do not till pelleted lime into your beds without letting rain or irrigation break them down into powders first.
You are basically returning the pellets into powder (it was powder before it was a pellet) by doing this, thus increasing the surface area of the lime for better and uniform reactivity.

Your test shows what you need (like barbee said). You can determine exactly what purchased limestone has in it and be confident you are adding the right elements. Limestone is as natural as ash.
Ash is fine option, but you don't have a really good idea of the exact elemental composition or quantity without getting it analyzed. So, how much you use will be a guess, and going with someone else's rate is blindly following their experience based on their soil and climate.
Again, not wrong to use, but getting a test done implies you are looking for a some level of precision, and not following that up with known elements of specific quantities is sort of counter productive.
Like if you had a blood test or stool test and it shows you are very low in iron. You know you can take an iron source, but how much and from what source. You could just say, well, I'll take molasses. Well, how much? How much do I need based on what is contained in molasses versus ground beef? You would need to know what each source contains, then figure on how much of either you need to consume to get to where you want to be.
Hope that makes sense.
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