No, you do not need to correct :-) As long as your soil is on the acidic side of the range, the excess calcium should not be an issue. And higher than optimum levels of either nutrient are not detrimental to plant growth although they could affect availability or uptake of other nutrients, especially N, You may want to keep and eye on that and it typically needs to be routinely supplemented anyway.

thank you. I suspect that the nitrogen levels are fairly high as well. not sure why they were not tested. The soil is made up from 60% poultry house bedding that's been composting for 3 years, 30% clean top soil, and 10% sand. The top soil had a bit more clay than I like so I am adding perlite to help make sure the soil isn't too heavy. Testing was done prior to adding the perlite.

well the chicken litter fraction explains a lot. It has large amounts of Ca if they were layers (and P regardless) due to diet. now just bury whatever organic trash you may have, to keep the earthworms, fungi and other critters happy. no need to add perlite, since perlite is unable to make channels in the soil which your plants need to grow best. or mulch with something like leaves after the plants are established.

N is seldom tested by most professional labs as it is extremely difficult to pin down. It is the most mobile of any of the plant nutrients, is consumed in the greatest quantity and will vary widely from season to season and even from day to day (and time of day) based on sun and temps and even rainfall. It almost always requires supplementation, usually through applications of OM, particularly in a vegetable garden.

Adding perlite to a garden bed is unnecessary and overly expensive - organic matter will achiever the same effect of loosening of a heavy soil, as well as providing multiple other benefits that perlite does not.

ok thank you. I appreciate the input. I will see if I can return this perlite since it was pretty expensive. I am putting in 13 large raised beds so it took quite a bit of soil to fill them. And a lot of perlite which I have only added to three of the beds thus far.

Many years ago while I was managing a soil test lab. the wording was changed on the reports. The term "Excessive" was changed to "Above optimum". The later term better describes your test results. But adding chicken litter can dramatically influence your soil nutrient level so you need to use discretion in how much you add.

There is no harm in adding perlite. It may be an expensive soil amendment but some smaller gardeners like the improved soil texture, appearance and increased porosity. I add it to potted media regularly. There is much debate about what works best. I even was suprised that a reputable commercial grower was using exclusive non-soil media for growing root crops. If it works for you then use it.

I felt like I needed perlite because I know drainage is not optimal in these beds. They all have a barrier under them. Rubber in some cases, tin in others. the only drainage is around the bottom edges. I had to do this because of the horribly aggressive weeds in the garden area (nut grass and coastal Bermuda hay). I potted up a few persimmon trees in the soil mix as it came off the truck and it seemed very heavy and not draining well. Maybe I'll go ahead and use it since I already have it.

If water is puddling on top of your weed barrier you may have to correct that before being able to get good results from your plantings. Also you may in fact have to cut your purchased bed filler with some persistent, non decomposing lightening agent like grit, Perlite or sand in order to get - and keep - the texture you want. Prepared soils offered on the market here can be kind of lousy, you could be encountering the same thing there. I've taken at least one local product, mixed it with water (half soil and half water) in a glass jar and seen it to be essentially mud as it settled out into layers of differing textures. I kept the experiment around for awhile, had more and more fine material become visible as time went by. As though this continuing differentiation might go on indefinitely.

"They all have a barrier under them. Rubber in some cases, tin in others. the only drainage is around the bottom edges. I had to do this .."

Agree with Embo above. Doing that is going to create ponding and that is going to be a much worse problem for you than any soil test issues. And as many have discovered they will be long standing issues.

If there is ANY way possible before planting those rubber and tin bottoms must be removed. For your weed problem one uses hardware cloth and several layers of cardboard - never metal or rubber or even landscape fabric.

Dave

the weeds that I have won't be slowed down at all by weed cloth or cardboard. I have tried both in the past. Tried even commercial weed cloth. Using something like rubber or tin is the ONLY way to keep this highly invasive grass from consuming the entire beds. The grass would grow up from the bottom and take over the whole bed within two years time. This stuff is BAD. so far, it seems that they are draining fine. We have had some pretty heavy rains and I dug down into the beds and found nice moist loose soil. No packed mud, no pooling. This is going to have to work. There is no option. one year I set up an above ground pool, with a ground cloth under it. Within two months, the nut grass grew thru the bottom of the pool. if you have never had to deal with these two weeds you just can't imagine how invasive and resilient they are.

the nut grass grew thru the bottom of the pool

What, specifically are you depicting here? Cyperus esculentus growing up into water, through a barrier, from soil underneath?

yes. yellow nut sedge. or possibly purple nut sedge. They both grow here and I never really paid close attention to which one it is. It grew through weed cloth and through the bottom of the pool into the water. when I first saw it in the pool I thought some grass had gotten dropped in there. I got in to remove it and that's when I realized it had grown through the bottom of the pool. There's an old saying here in the south "the only way to get rid of nut grass is to move". I believe it! I don't believe it can go through the 45 mil rubber or roofing tin under my beds.