Blood meal is acidic. It's an organic source of nitrogen.

cottonseed meal is a vegan alternative to blood meal, and is also fairly acidic. It would be another good alternative for you.

I'd have to look it up, but I think conductivity refers to the soil's ability to hold onto nutrients in solution (and maybe water, in macropores) vs. having them leach away? It's related to the sodium levels and high conductivity isn't necessarily a good thing. I think that the high organic matter % balances or helps to remedy it?

6.34 organic matter is great! Don't forget you will have to keep it up. Tilling will burn it up quickly. Soymeal is also slightly acid, cheap and slow release. Not as quick a nitrogen burst as bloodmeal so it depends on what you need. I use soymeal as the main meal and sidedress with slight amounts of bloodmeal as needed.

Coffee grounds, high in nitrogen and very acidic. They can be scratched into the surface of the soil all year long and many cofee shops will give them out.

What was your calcium to magnesium ratio?

If you're interested in learning a little more about balanced soil, check with your local library for the DVD "Hands-On Agronomy" by Neal Kinsey. If they don't have it in their system, have them get it for you on an inter-library loan. I got it right after I got my soil test, and sat down to watch it with my test in my hand. But be aware that there is always discrepancies between labs, so don't try to think it should be an exact match.

And good for you for GETTING a soil test! Most people avoid it because they think it's a waste of money, or scary because they think they won't understand it.

Sue

belgianpup, like I said my Ca is way high, at 9,341 ppm. Magnesium is 270 ppm. Is that a problem?

I'm always hearing that Blossom End Rot on tomatoes is caused by calcium deficiency. Now I know FOR SURE that's not always true, because I still get BER on some varieties. It's gotta be due to something else (though I'm not especially worried since it's only certain varieties that get it, so I could just not grow those).

As for people thinking that getting a soil test is a waste fo money, it's probably not as much of a waste of money as buying fertilizers that you don't need!

And the results, at least from A&M, were super easy to understand. They tell you how much of each nutrient you have, and how much you should have, and then a list of all the nutrients you need to add and how much of each. It says the only thing I need to add is nitrogen, so I'll be on the lookout for blood meal or cottonseed meal or something like that and don't have to bother with anything else.

Good report.Worth every penny spent.
As I undestand it, luckily lowering PH is much easier than raising it. You are low on sulphur ? Most acidifiers are sulphur base(acid rain ?). I wonder what was A&M's recomendation to lower PH ?.Most garden veggies (except some herbs) like slightly acid soil (PH = 6.8 being ideal, where PH= 7 is nutral). So bringing 7.6 to 6.8 is not very difficult.

Sounds like you are having a great time with that soil test! Such an enthusiastic gardener you are.

For the record USED coffee grounds are nearly pH neutral. Starbucks had theirs analyzed for NPK too. There are threads in the soil forum that discuss it.

Hope you have a super garden this year, neo

Hepatica

I second the rec on Kinsey and acresUSA.

My understanding is that N is not really part of soil testing concern. Well-balanced biological systems shouldn't need any N input. This is the huge gap between conventional and holistic (and most organic practitioners are trapped in it also). Until the NPK giants got control of the land-grant university research, everything was pointing toward balancing the micro-nutrients and building soil-life. Then starting in the 60's the land-grants started focussing on NPK and cides for row crops. That was very good for the big chemical companies and pretty well destroyed farming as an occupation.

With clay soil and a high ph you should be able to easily build a self-perpetuating system that needs very few inputs once you raise the low staves.

You're pH of 7.6 really isn't too bad for most vegetables but a downward adjustment would increase nutrient availability and, most likely, yield. I would add sulfur prior to the next cropping cycle. I would do about 15 lbs. per 1000 sq. ft. tilled to a depth of 6 to 8 inches. That will adjust your pH downward over time and it will happen pretty dang slowly. Remember that lime buffers against that change and since you have a lot of it, you're soil is strongly buffered. Clay is another thing that will buffer against pH changes and if you have a clay soil, that will also work against your downward pH adjustment. Another test next year to see where you're at would be in order.
For nitrogen, as mentioned above, blood meal would be a good choice. 10 to 15 lbs. per 1000 sq. ft. tilled to the same depth should be about right for new plants.

If you're looking for one material that that will provide nitrogen while acidifying, blood meal will do virtually nothing, particularly considering your buffering capacity. You would have to move to synthetics to do what you have in mind. Two options would be ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) and sulfur coated urea, which is usually around (40-0-0). Ammonium sulfate = fast release, sulfur coated urea = slow release. Good rates would be 7 lbs. and 5 lbs. per 1000 sq. ft., respectively. Both of those would also give your sulfur level a little boost as well. But be aware that the pH change would rely on regular re-application of those acidifying fertilizers over a very loooooong time (again, buffer). The sulfur really would be a better route for you.
On a side note, as your instincts have already told you, BER is not always due to low calcium in the soil. Un-even watering (too wet, followed by too dry, repeat) is usually what leads to the problem. Yes, it's a calcium deficiency in the tissue but variances in water availability to the plant plays a major role in the uptake of that nutrient.

Alfalfa pellets, sold for feeding rabbits, is another source of nitrogen. Compare prices of alfalfa pellets and cottonseed meal for best economy. Lawn clippings are good too.

You are doing a nice job of dispelling some of the myths which abound concerning plant nutrients with the facts you are presenting.

Jim

0.93% is a huge amount of Ca. Great greens over there. But what do you make of your theory of Ca/K competition, PN? That is an amount of Ca your old garden will never see, yet K is above average.

It's likely that the Ca number is actually skewed upward quite a bit. The problem is all of that lime. When you run a relatively aggressive extraction on a high lime soil (ammonium acetate, Mehlich 3, etc.) you'll end up dissolving a lot of that lime, which gives you much higher calcium values than would actually be available in the soil due to the relatively limited solubility of lime. I prefer a less aggressive NaCl extraction for high lime soils specifically because the calcium number is waaaay more realistic as it relates to plant availability. Based on the other results, I can virtually guarantee they're using one of the more aggressive extraction methods. Without really knowing the available Ca, it's tough to make a call on the Ca:K ratio but my gut tells me it's probably fine.

Glib, I would imagine the OP's condition exists because of the high clay content? Maybe the K is a released component of the rotted granites that made some of the clay, and has been cycling through plant growth for millennia on the site. If the Op is in one of the more arid parts of Texas then low rainfall plus clay in the soil equals high retainment of minerals, right?

Whereas in my case the Ca has been added to the soil by my use of wood ash and manures and so forth, and the only thing to hold the cations in the sandy base is the humus in my OM, there being virtually no clay. For whatever reason I believe it is true that low K is a typical feature of sandy soils but not necessarily low Ca. For example I am working on my gardens in central fla right now and the test here showed fairly good Ca but very low K: 599 ppm vs 39 ppm.

It's the high lime and the extraction method yielding the outlandish Ca number. I'm not guessing on this.

Garg, I don't doubt it. close to 10k ppm Ca doesn't seem credible.

Do you live around Austin lol. Your soil sounds much like mine and I'm out in Pflugerville.

pnbrown and gargwarb: If it matters, I live on the eastern edge of the Edwards Plateau (aka Texas Hill Country), with characteristic black clay soil and karst limestone bedrock (and the area is full of caves and sinkholes into that limestone). In my garden I'm constantly digging out chunks of limesone and using it to build up sides to my raised beds. People say the soil here sucks, but I'm really starting to think that's just because of the annoying rocks, and not that it's infertile or anything.

There was no visible limestone in the sample I sent them, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were still tiny bits in there that they could have dissolved when they were doing their tests.

You should see how hard the water is here!

jimster and hepatica: Well, I'm a big science nerd, so I like it when I get to do SCIENCY things in my garden! Now that I've got some good data, I get to experiment with ways to raise my N and maybe lower my pH. Preferably organically. I'm not too worried about it though, because the only crop I've had real trouble with is potatoes. I literally should have just eaten the seed potatoes instead of planting them. That's how low my yields were!

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden blog - if anyone is interested

Thanks for your answer, PN, and the whole discussion is quite interesting.