Beginner Gardening: radish failure, 3 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
I could have iron and/or phosphorous deficiency: no soil tests yet. I have only had soil for a few soils. I'm making it a few wheelbarrows at a time, so every bed is wildly different.

I THINK I have avoided nutrient imbalance and lock-outs by keeping the soil lean and never risking over-fertilization.
But each bed could have wildly different pH and that could interfere with uptake of this or that.
And I could have severe shortages of something - or something different in each bed.
But as long as nothing LOOKS severely malnourished or wierd, I'm putting my budget into generic amendments, not one soil test for each tiny raised bed.

Here I think that my huge exess of clay does help me some. Whatever minerals ARE around or get added, are going to be very well retained, buffered, and released gradually by the clay I curse. Compost brings in "a little of everything" in reasonable balance, and I do add as much compost as I can afford. I'll be remedying "zero OM" for years.

I fairly frequently add very small small amounts of balanced generic fertilizer (last time, "16-16-16" was cheapest for the concentration). I would not mess around with real micronutrients until I had a good soil test. (Iron, Mg and Sulfer woujld be the first semi-micros I would get fancy with if something looked sickly. Like, chelated iron, MgSO4, dolomite lime.)

However, testing pH is always worth it until you know your region. I should.

NE was easy: it's always acid or very acid. Add a few bags of dolomite lime every year or two. You can't CARRY and spread enoguh lime to make it TOO basic. Even if you do manage to beat the acidity above pH 7.5 or 8 ONE year, expect the rain to knock pH back down to "acid" in a year or two.

My first goal (starting with my pretty pure clay suitable for bricks or pottery, zero perk, zero areation) is to get enough organics and amendements into each bed to create any drainage, aeration, and eventually enough 'structure') to allow any growth.

Then give them a few years in annuals so roots, worms, and more compost can keep improving it. I turn 1-2 times per year for the first few years, adding as much compost as I can buy or make.

The oldest bed is good enoguh now that I mostly only scratch compost into the top 6". I try to improve each bed enough that, when I dig 8-12" down, it has not reverted to airless pudding-clay.

And I rely on raised beds with 8-12-16" walls, plus slope (grade) and drainage trenchs to keep them draining and aerated while the soil still has little or no real structure or air pockets and channels.

Before I invested in in soil tests, I would first get all the soil to the point of at least "poor" structure and some organic matter and roota. Then I will wheel enough soil from one bed to another to average them out. Then another year to mix and mellow, THEN maybe the price of just one test would be worth it to me.

I'm cheap and would rather buy 50 more bags of manure/compost mix than pay $60 for a soil test when I know the most desperate need is for organic matter and drainage/aeration. Meanwhile, I am carefull to fertilize very minimally, trying to go from "almost none" to "almost enough" of most things. I would rather under-fertilize then over-fertilze. Hunger and slow growth is better than toxicity and death.

So far the only times I see conspicuous yellowing or ill helath is in a very new, raw bed, with no life in it. Even that is rare now, since I back-innoculate from more established beds into raw ones, and am careful to give the most compost to the crummiest neediest beds.

I don't worry much about nutrition until I'm sure the roots won't drown, and there's ednoguh OM for SOME soil life to establish itself.