You?ll never stop improving the soil, but sometimes you can coast for a while and just tweak things a bit. An annual soil test will tell you where you?re headed. Be sure to write ORGANIC on your test request, as most labs will automatically give chemical farming info. Natural inputs come in organic and mineral forms, or a combination of the two. Organic Matter is basically unbroken-down compost and the manure. Both contain varying amounts of nitrogen, and both CAN contain various amounts of various minerals, esp phosphorus and potassium, but there's no guarantee as to levels, because the compost ingredients and the animal feed nutrient values vary all over the place. HUMUS is OM that has been completely broken down by soil microbes, and is the long-term source of nutrients. They are not one and the same. A volatile nutrient like nitrogen can be washed out, blown away, off-gassed due to plowing, or used by the crop. Any of these can reduce the amount of what you think you've got, even from week to week. Minerals come from the soil, from broken-down rock. Some of them are in the organic matter, but not everything your plants need; some just plain isn?t there and won?t be there unless you make a point of specifically adding it. The more crop residue you return to the soil, the more minerals it will retain. Your local soil and climate is going to affect what your soil contains and maintains. If you live in a warmish area with not much more than 25" of rain and a fair (but not excessive) amount of clay, your soil will hold more nutrients than a rainy place. If you live in a wet climate, quite a few nutrients will be flushed out of the root zone by the excessive rain. If you live in a hot place like SoCal, TX, AZ or FL, the heat cooks the OM out of the (usually) sandy soil, but you might retain more minerals. What do your soil test results look like from your unfertilized soil? That's a major clue as to what you're going to have to keep up (or suppress), so find a spot that hasn?t been fertilized or mineralized if you have never gotten a soil test. And your soil pH is going to influence how much of the various nutrients are going to be available to the plants. Just because it?s sitting there in the soil doesn?t mean the nutrients are available. Here in the PNW, soil tests show how the heavy rainfall leaches out nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium and boron -- IOW, all the main important stuff. We either have to keep adding it, or grow fall cover crops that will bind up some/most of those minerals and hold it until the cover crop is incorporated in spring. Some things, like boron, have to be added continually. What levels are ideal? It depends on what you're growing, as different food plants need different amounts of nutrients. Corn is the big nutrient hog. "Jolj" gave a basic list above. If your soil is nutritionally balanced, you can plant things closer together. If it isn?t quite up to par, space them further apart than recommended so their roots can search for nutrients. Here is what I?ve been able to glean from various sources, so far. Please chime in, folks, if you think my figures are off. Also, different labs use different methods, and those methods may produce different results. It?s not advisable to skip around from lab to lab. Find one you like and stay with them. Nitrogen: 5% good organic matter should have an estimated nitrogen release of 100 lbs of nitrogen per acre (100 ppm). Is that enough for the crop you have in mind? If you have too much nitrogen due to an overload of compost, the nitrogen will drive some calcium out of the soil, and your crop yields will suffer. If you add a LOT of OM and you have disease or insect problems, something else is off, probably due to the excessive nitrogen levels. Too much of anything will almost always cause trouble, including drinking excessive amounts of water. Moderation is the key. Phosphorus: 30 to 60 ppm. How much is available depends on your soil pH ? the closer to 6.5, the better. Phosphorus: 120-200 ppm, but it has to be available, not just sitting there inert. Calcium and Magnesium: The total combination of calcium and magnesium should total 80%. Normal soil should be near 68% calcium + 12% magnesium. But if your soil is sandy, 60 + 20 would be better. A heavier clay soil, 70 + 10. Keep in mind that although lime contains calcium, you have to know your soil pH and your calcium/magnesium percentages to be able to choose the right calcium-based minerals to use. Sulfur: 20-25 ppm, up to 50 ppm for high-yielding crops like woody plants and pasture. Sodium: Some of the areas of the country tend toward excess, above 3%. Other parts of the U.S. go the other way, and a deficiency is often less than 0.5%. Micronutrients only make a difference when all of the above primary and secondary nutrients are balanced. Boron: 0.8 ? 1.5 ppm. This is the least stable of the elements, your crops need a steady supply, it can?t be reused. Boron is one of the few elements that can?t be built up, so if it isn?t naturally in your soil, you may have to add it every year, and maybe even through the growing season. Chlorine is chloride: it normally isn?t deficient, esp if your calcium level is good; but excesses (usually much over 250 ppm) are known, esp in compacted soils, or known saline soils, and it isn?t easy to deal with. Molybdenum: 0.01-10 ppm. Copper: 2-10 ppm, but 5-10 is best. Most soils are deficient, but once you get your level up to par, copper is stable enough to stay there for quite a while. Copper and Molybedenum work together, so test and treat for it together properly. Iron: 200+ ppm. Check for it in chalky, high-calcium soils, where it is most likely to be deficient. Excess iron isn?t a problem. Iron works with manganese and sulfur, so check levels for all three. Lime added within 3 years will affect soil tests. Manganese: 40-250 ppm, but best results in 80-125 ppm range. Zinc: 6-12 ppm, 10 is excellent. Once the levels are up to par, it is easy to keep it up on clay and humus. Too much nitrogen will tie up zinc. Suggestion: for more info, get hold of Neal Kinsey?s book Hands-On Agronomy, available in the library system. Sue

Hyacinths also depend on water temperature. They tend not to grow too vigorously below 65°F or so. Adding the iron, as mentioned above, will help green them up. But the form of the iron is crucial - ferric forms will immediately precipitate out and not be available for the plants; even the ferrous forms can be fairly readily oxidized to the ferric forms and then precipitate out. Which is why it's best to use the chelated form. You can further help your plants along by adding a small amount of "stump remover" - this is the way it's sold in many hardware stores, Home Depot, etc. - it really is nothing more than potassium nitrate. Or you may be lucky to find that you can buy a bag of small amount of potassium nitrate directly (check out the fertilizer section of your garden center). They tend not to sell this since there are "other uses" that some people use potassium nitrate for. You can add approximately 1 tablespoon per 1000 gallons once a week with no impact on your fish. In this fashion you're providing a modest amount of nitrogen and potash to stimulate growth of the plants without adding phosphorous. You didn't indicate the nitrate levels in your pond but you might want to measure them before you start adding the potassium nitrate just to be on the safe side. The 1 tablespoon per 1000 gallons won't jump it significantly and should be taken up by your plants very rapidly (usually I find it's gone within a few hours) specially on bright sunny days and if the water temperature is moderately warm. As has been mentioned elsewhere by Larryl you can also add just potash. However, I've found that the combination usually tends to kick them into high gear. Long about July I'm putting bucket loads of water hyacinths through the shredder and into the compost pile! Hope this helps. ---David

Dear andreabwilliams SC, Are you gardening in South Carolina? If so, Formosa azaleas are widely grown throughout the state. They are the staples of the Charleston gardens, e.g., Middleton Place. Why don't you compare notes with your neighbors regarding how to improve your Formosas? Or contact the horticulturist at Middleton Place to ask his advice. It looks as though you shouldn't be having any trouble with cultivating Formosa azaleas in a state where the soil tends to be acidic and there is an abundance of pine needles to use as mulch.

Comments appreciated. I know of no place other than Garden Web where a discussion like this can occur. Here are some of Solomon's comments, which prompted this posting (I'm quoting him not because I know enough to agree or disagree, but so that the information is available for discussion): First, he generalizes that the Maritime Northwest has a fairly uniform geologic history, and that the soils throughout this region are generally similar in mineral content. So he doesn't encourage testing. Then, on page 27: "the essence of our region's soil imbalance hinges on an overly high level of an otherwise useful mineral, potassium. Our soils usually have lot of potassium - maybe too much. I've studied the results of hundreds of soil tests performed by OSU and I have never seen a test showing a marked potassium deficiency - lots of other deficiencies, yes, but not of K" Also on page 27: "the nutrients that provoke plants to become highly nutritious - calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus - are the ones most readily lost. I view this as a widespread regional mineral imbalance." He goes on to say that because plants concentrate the potassium in the fiber and woody parts, and those are the main parts that are used in a lot of animal feeds (and therefore enter into manures) and composting, while other minerals are leached out in rain or removed in farm products, that we are artificially increasing the potassium in our soil while other components decline. So, he offers that the more compost we add to our gardens, the more we bulid up potassium relative to other elements. The Clemson link above was really intereesting. In a way, it could be taken to support a contention that using a lot of plant stems in compost would increase the soil level of potassium where that compost is used. "Luxury consumption and leaching loss make it undesirable to try to build the potassium level above medium." It does state that potassium will leach into the clay layer - although, my soil is all basically clay layer... now amended with lots of compost. Anyway, I'll keep watching for comments. For now, the fruit peels will still go into the compost.