You might want to post this over on the Soil & Compost forum as that is where most of the soil improvement discussions are located. Lots of good info and FAQs there to browse through.

Otherwise, my primary question is what recommendations for additives were included in the report because the numbers you report apparently aren't in PPM as with all the reports I am familiar with? For example, Mag is normally reported as 60-300 ppm, not 11. If they mean 11 ppm then yours is quite low. Phos of 0 is almost impossible.

South Carolina soil, correct? Need more info.

Dave

Yes I'm in Greenville SC. And the unit of measure is PPM.

The soil report should have also had recommendations for fertilizer( the additives that digfirt2 was talking about.) You might post a picture of the report and see if we can interpret it. The Phosphorous does seem to be off. The only zero I remember seeing on a soils report has been nitrogen.

The pH looks perfect unless you are going to be growing an acid loving plant such as blueberries.

Adding enough compost will improve the soil over time. Usually in the first year the nitrogen will be low due to the soil bacteria using it to break down organic matter.

People using raised beds usually have much more success in the second year than they do in the first year. Adding compost to a regular garden can have the same lag time.

What I meant above was is the garden composed of native soil or is it a raised bed filled with something else? If so, what?

And either way, what have you added to it in the way of nutrients in the past. In other words, when the garden was doing poorly last year what were you feeding the plants? Compost is a soil improvement, not a fertilizer.

Dave

Very few of anything has been added in the last few years aside from compost. It is native soil and I plan on growing beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers etc.

This is what I received from the extension service.

Below is a link to a soil-less mix interpretation.

http://www.clemson.edu/public/regulatory/ag_svc_lab/soil_testing/soil_interpretation.html

Basically,
there are very few nutrients in your sample, but the pH is fine. It
looks like you might have added some lime to raise the pH, and added
nitrate nitrogen.
The levels of P & K are too low. You’ll notice there are 2 charts:
one for a bark mix and one for a peat mix for interpretation of results.

Generally,
only greenhouse growers use this analysis to monitor nutrients and pH
because they are continually running fertilizers through their
irrigation system to
plants, like bedding plants or perennials.

"Very few of anything has been added in the last few years aside from compost. It is native soil "

So you have provided nothing to replace all the nutrients that the plants over the past few years have removed from the soil and that is the problem. I assume you have also not fed the plants anything throughout the growing season. The result is basically nutrient-barren soil and little to nothing will grow well in it.

As I said above compost is primarily a soil amendment, NOT a fertilizer. It's level of nutrients is quite low, even in ideal compost, and compost comes in all levels of quality. Plus those nutrients are only available to the plants if there is an active soil food web of bacteria to pre-digest it.

Can compost alone provide enough nutrients for healthy plant growth? Perhaps, over a period of years to get established, if it is high quality, regularly added in sufficient quantities through out the growing season and during the off season, and if an active soil micro-herd is established first and kept well fed. Otherwise other forms of nutrients MUST be provided by the grower. They can be organic supplements or not - your choice. But what the plants remove must be replaced.

I'm not sure what the remainder of your post is about. The link leads to an outlook express app one must log into to access. If you are using native soil then any references to "soil-less mix interpretation" are not relevant.

Dave

Almost all soils have a degree of nutrients. Otherwise, nothing would grow in areas where people do not fertilize.

What I think happened was you tilled up the ground, put in the compost in the soil, and it used up any available nitrogen in the soil. Sometimes compost has not completely decomposed and bacteria will use up the remaining Nitrogen to finish the job.

I could not open the link, but it looks like the soil test you got was not for outdoor gardeners but for greenhouse growers. I would get another soil test that is for lawns and gardens and see what that shows. I would apply granular fertilize, without any added chemicals like weed N weed, with a ration close to 4:1:3. (something like a 24-6-18 or 15-5-10) This should replace anything that the plants would need short term. After you get the soil growing good you can slowly go to a more organic approach.

I have seen many people apply a lot of organic matter to a garden and wander why it does not grow the first year. Usually, in the second year everything has broken down and the soil bacteria levels out and things grow better.