About to start my first ever vegetable garden on a very small (75 sq ft) area. Soil in this area was full of bits of trash and who knows what else, so to play it safe I had 12" of soil dug up and hauled away, and 12" of new topsoil delivered. Sent sample of new soil to Penn State for testing; results are below. I am hoping to plant lettuce, peas, and other early crops in a couple of weeks. In the next few days, I plan to add the following to the soil: - approx. 1 lb elemental sulfur (guidelines on test results say to use 1.25 lb/100 sq ft to bring 7.5 pH soil to 6.5) - approx. 0.375 urea (test results suggest 0.5 lb per 100 sq ft, although I'm not really sure why, since the test doesn't include nitrogen) - couple inches of compost (I'll use what I can from my own bins, but I doubt there's much finished compost there, so most of it will come from the city compost site) - inch or so of peat moss - 0.75 lb. of kelp meal (from Gardens Alive -- I happen to have a bag of it) Does this plan seem reasonable? Also, what's with the hugely high calcium level? I assume this is related to the high pH? Is there anything I should do about this? Thanks in advance for the feedback. Image link:

I'm a doofus. I missed the fact that the analysis was conducted on your 2/3 soil to 1/3 mushroom compost blend. Anyway, my comment about 0.0 ppm available nitrogen stands. I think it's a lab error. My comments about salinity also stand because we don't know the starting salinity of the compost or the soil. That being said, the final blend is 23% O.M. by dry weight, which is super high. If the mushroom compost was 1/3 of the final blend by volume, that would put you in the 7 to 8% organic range by dry weight if mixed with a mineral soil. And that's if the compost itself were high in organic material. (The analyses I looked at for the compost ranged from about 30 to 60% O.M. by dry weight). So, it would be a safe bet that your 4-way soil is probably around 15% O.M. by dry weight or a little higher. That means that it was probably about 50% to 60% organic material by volume and who the heck knows what that O.M. was. If it was raw wood chips, you would still have some available nitrogen in the analysis, but potentially not enough to balance carbon and it's feasible that you do indeed have a nitrogen draw issue. Or, if it has a heavy manure component, that could contribute to salts. (even a high quality greenwaste compost will often have a salinity level of 5 to 7 dS/m). Also consider that such a high amount of organic matter has the potential to hold too much water, especially if drainage isn't all that great at the bottom of the planters.

On the main page it will say start a conversation. ..click it. Than type in your subject which must be 15 or more letters...than type in the body of your message than click next...here you must choose at least one place for your thread to goto. I scrolled down and found kitchen table and clicked it..than I clicked post. ..do not assume that just brcause your at the KT when you start your thread that it will show up here...it won't unless you choose the KT.

Husband picked six quarts last week and four a few days ago. I think he hopes to go again but they close on Saturday. It's the rain that shortened the season . I absolutely LOVED the rain in May. It was the rainiest May in our history going back to 1880 ...10 inches. But we needed it so bad because last summer, last fall, last winter, and first part of spring, were waaay below normal and we were in a half a foot deficit. They said our groundwater still was in a deficit but everything is flourishing and I know that bad stuff is coming. I hate summer ,hate hot weather and that's why I loved May when it was cool and rainy. A few nights it was in the 40s. My yard is so heavily treeed that I didn't notice the heat until I just went over to the doctor's office to give blood for next week's visit, and it was beastly in the parking lot.