Sharon, I know very little about soil, but I can tell you what I did when I lived in town and wanted a pretty lawn. Most of the soil around here has a high mineral count, so nitrogen is what I watch most closely. Also Arkansas does not test for nitrogen on their FREE soil test because they say it can fluctuate so much. I read some where that you could maintain a pretty green lawn with 1 lb of nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft.. You have to calculate % of nitrogen in your formula, for me it was a gal milk jug for the front and one side lawn every 3 weeks. I also sprayed with MSMA to try to kill all grass except the Bermuda. I can no longer get the bagged nitrogen like I used then, but I can get urea, which will do the same thing if I use a little less of it (it is 40+ %). I have not tried to maintain a pretty lawn in 20 years, but in my opinion it is much easier to have a pretty lawn than it is to have a pretty, and productive garden.

I hope someone will jump in here and help us both. I plan to start to work on my lawn for next year, I will start about Nov. with a pre-emergent, then nitrogen, and later with MSMA. Maybe someone can get on here and tell of a new product or a better way.

Racking in a little compost has always helped my lawn.

Larry

Sharon,

Normally everything in clay is high because clay is high in minerals. At least you have a pretty decent soil pH.

I think most state labs mainly just test for N-P-K and soil pH on the basic soil test. Were you wrong to expect more for $10? Probably, because (unfortunately) $10 doesn't buy you much any more. To get a soil tilth analysis you have to use someone like the private soil lab in Edinburgh, Texas and you have to be willing to pay for it.

To understand the tilth and texture of my soil in various parts of our property, I just used the jar soil test when we finished building the house and moved here. I already knew that only the soil in our woodland had adequate organic matter, so didn't even really need the jar soil test to tell me that, but I used it to help me understand what percentage of our soil was clay, sand, and silt. The soil on our property varied a great deal from one area to another with very little uniformity, so I did a separate soil jar test in each area so I could understand the challenges of planting in the back yard (which had a clayey-sandy blend) versus the front and side yards (extremely dense red clay from which you could make clay flower pots) versus the veggie garden area (sandy-silty along one edge, then sandy-clayey from there down to the middle of the garden, and dense clay for the remaining half of the garden. After that,I then knew what plants would tolerate the soil in each area of the yard based on their adaptability to heavy clay versus sand/silt with little clay, and also knew which parts of the garden had the worst soil and needed the most amendment. If I had followed standard soil testing procedures and dug up soil from the various areas, mixed it together I wouldn't have learned much about the tilth in my various areas because I would have mixed it all up together. I think the best way to understand the tilth/texture in a specific area is to do the jar soil test. If your soil is uniform on your property, one jar test is all you need, but I don't really know how a person would know if their soil was uniformly the same without doing a jar soil test from several different areas just to establish that.

In our sandy/silty area I couldn't keep anything alive in the drought of 2003 because I hadn't added enough organic matter to that area and it just wouldn't hold enough moisture even with heavy irrigation. Because I had been amending that soil for 4 years before the drought of 2003, it was disheartening to feel like 4 years of soil improvement hadn't helped much. We've been here 14 years now, and that area did much better in the droughts of 2011 and 2012, but I still feel like it doesn't have enough organic matter, and maybe it never will, though it is not for lack of trying on my part.

Understanding the soil you have in a specific part of your yard or garden can be very difficult if that area differs from the other areas you have planted. With highly variable soil like mine, it drives me crazy. Ultimately, though, the lesson I have taken from trying to grow stuff here is that you have to add organic matter all the time. I don't mean that you have to rototill it into the soil---just piling OM on top of the ground inproves it over time. I decided a long time ago to follow Mother Nature's Lead. How does she build soil? By letting organic matter fall to the ground, pile up, and decompose---no rototilling to dig it in, etc. When I walk down into our woodland, which has an estimated age of 60-80 years, depending on who you talk to here and what they remember about how this land was farmed, the first 8 or so inches of soil are black, humusy and rich. Down beneath? Same old red clay in some areas and silty/sandy soil in others. How did that black, rich, humusy soil get there? Just from organic matter decaying there over the decades.

Did your soil test address your Cation Exchange Capacity at all? It might have been abbreviated as C.E.C. That usually is included in soil tests, though I haven't had a lab soil test in many years so don't know if they still tell you the C.E.C. on the basic test or not. C.E.C. is one bit of info from soil testing that I find helpful.

A lab like the private soil testing lab in Edinburgh, Texas, can do many kinds of tests, including testing one's soil for heavy metals, boron, etc. but it is not an inexpensive process, and the more testing that is done, the higher the fee. As a landowner who is not a farmer, I probably wouldn't spend this kind of money on a soil test unless I had problems I couldn't solve on my own without such a test. The kind of testing they do is aimed more at folks who farm. If I had extremely sandy soil, I might find I needed that more complicated and expensive testing because it is very hard to turn almost pure sand (I am not talking about sandy loam, but about sugar sand and the like) into fertile sandy loam. Because you have to do heroic amounts of soil amending to fix sugar sand, the in-depth testing from private soil labs could be very helpful.

The best thing you can do for any soil is to continually add organic matter to it year in and year out, and to not overfeed it with nutrients that can build up in your soil. Too much of one nutrient, for example, can interfere with plants' ability to take up and use other nutrients. Also, I think that everyone tends to focus on N-P-K too much, and often people don't think about the micronutrients. If you're adding lots of organic matter, you'll have the micronutrients in the right proportions. However, in the early years while still improving the soil, I use lots of Espoma organic fertilizers because they do include the micronutrients. I still use them after the soil is highly improved, but at lower rates.

Crape myrtles, by the way, generally do well in clay. Just by piling on compost and bark mulch year after year, you will be putting enough organic matter on the ground around the crape myrtles to keep them happy. I grew beautiful crape myrtles in Texas black gumbo clay and never did one thing to the soil. The crape myrtles only got nitrogen fertilizer when we fed the yard anually with a pelleted nitrogen-only soil fertilizer. Over the years, the mulch will decompose and earthworms and other little critters, as well as rainfall, will carry the nutrients from your mulch/compost down into the soil.

Hope this helps,
Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Jar Test for Texture

Thanks, Larry and Dawn...I'm a little delayed in responding because I was out of town for a few days.

Yes...I know I need to continue adding organic matter to the soil, no matter which part of my yard. I'm glad I'm fairly neutral (tiny bit acidic)on my pH readings - I was just surprised that was all I got back (no - no C.E.C.)

Crape myrtles...something had to have happened to the one that wasn't happy. It's still not as happy as the other two, but it hasn't gotten any worse, so I'm hoping it's focused on growing healthy roots and the foliage will come in time.

As far as my lawn goes...I really want to improve it organically. The only inorganic thing I've done to it (and will probably continue to for one more season) is to use an MSMA herbicide against the Dallis grass. Spot-painting that while improving my soil seems to be helping a bunch. When I've had a good amount of compost (haha, one time) I was able to screen out some fines to put on my front yard, and I'll continue doing that as long as I can get them. Otherwise, I've put alfalfa pellets down for nitrogen...and I'm still reading the lawn forum and other sites to see what is within my means to do to improve the soil.

I was just surprised that my test came back with such a little bit of information - but I'll take it and run with it. Just collecting the soil was interesting for me - my soil has had a fair amount of attention in some areas, but in others....wow, it's bad! So...for that it was worthwhile, too.

Sharon

Yeah, you don't get much for your money any more, and that is not meant as a criticism of OSU or anyone else. They do the best they can with the budget they have. More detailed soil testing like we used to get in the 60s and 70s cost a whole lot more now, when it is even available at all. Many extension service labs no longer even test for nitrogen because it is highly mobile in soil, and in cold weather the nitrogen doesn't show up well on the tests.

Dawn

I had the same situation a couple of years ago. Here is my suggestion. Call down to the OSU extension office 713-1125 and ask if Ray Ridlin is in that day. Take your paperwork down in person and make sure you see Ray Ridlin face to face. Don't even try to talk to him on the phone, just make sure he is in and see him in person and only him. Ray will review your results and give you clear solid advice. (The Master Gardeners are helpful but they aren't able to give you the level of help that Ray can, so only talk to Ray in PERSON.) I guarantee you this will be worth a short drive over there. 9th & Portland. He was able to give me even more advice than I figured he might and I tell you what, he is really really good.
Good luck, and post back what you find out.

I was gone for a few days. Did see this before I left but was busy trying to water and prepare everything including the animals for my 2 day plus absence. I've had a few tests performed over the last few years. I'm fortunate that in the first basic test in KS is free. The last test I had ran was in 010 and a detailed test with CEC was around the amount you paid. A complete soil analysis was in the $20 dollar range but was very comprehensive. All of the tests came with a written report and suggestions. What I have found is if I check I garden organically I receive more detailed instructions on what to add and methods to use than if I check the other box. I have used the lab in TX also. I had both labs do tests in 09 from the same samples to compare results. Overall very comparable. Their suggestions for corrective measures vary somewhat. The KSU person writing the report was used to the soil in my area and knows that the water and soil are alkaline. So deep soaking the soil in an effort to reduce the alkalinity has limited results. I plan on having the KSU lab run a couple of tests this fall. Their prices are 1/2 of what the other lab is and overall I felt the results are comparable. Sadly Dawn is correct. You won't receive much for ten dollars. Although I've been happy even with the free test here in KS. Not so much with the plant pathology lab though. Jay

Good thoughts...I will try to talk to Ray, but the only days I'm off (during the week)are Fridays...and they're kind of booked with appointments for the next two weeks...I will definitely try to squeeze it in, though - thanks!

Sharon