Soil mystery solved
I got my soil test results back, and it's no wonder nothing wants to grow in the Starplate pasture
--- the pH is 5.2 and the soil is seriously deficient in calcium (and
also rather low on sulfur, phosphorus, boron, copper, and zinc).
Luckily, I was able to look back at my old lunchtime series for The Intelligent Gardener and generate a prescription to fix the issues.
When liming soil, it's
best to apply the minerals in advance of other additions since the
calcium can cause other cations to wash out of the soil. So my
plan is to apply lime this fall, then gypsum, borax, copper sulfate, and
zinc sulfate in the spring. The hardest part of the endeavor will
be hauling 550 pounds of lime back through the muck to our core
homestead!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hi Anna and Mark,
Carey Ream's method was Cal-Phos first. Then Lime/Gypsom. Wait 2 weeks. Then LOTS of manure.
The other method would be live, fresh brewed compost tea to get the soil biology going so that could make minerals already there available.
And then there is the 'just put on lime' crowd.
IMHO - measure, treat, measure, treat, ... Where measure can be lab tests or careful observations of plants growing and which plants grow and how they look. See for example the writings of Joseph Mittleider and his plant doctor book series.
Just my two cents :).
John
Is it possible to use the goats to remineralize? I've heard multiple ranchers (Darren Doherty, Salatin, Greg Judy, etc.) talk about "free choice minerals" wherein you let the grazing animal choose which mineral they need to supplement. As time passes, those minerals end up in the pasture, but in a more bio-available way since they'd be in the decomposing manure, then through the earthworms and decomposers, and eventually back into the grass that gets grazed again.
I have no clue if it works with smaller groups of animals (i.e., two goats), but it might be a less-expensive and more gradual way to improve the ground there.