# Help with soil test results



## Don_Julio (Aug 16, 2021)

Hello everyone. This will be my first year making some data-driven decisions on my lawn. I did a renovation in my front yard last fall with TTTF and 10 percent KB. I added Urea weekly until the winter. It did great.

I did an overseed in my backyard with PR 70% and 30% FF. I threw down a starter fert and then followed up with Urea towards the end.

Below are my first-ever soil test results that I just got back last week. Can anybody please help me in understanding what I need to do? I see my PH is okay but I don't know if I should bring it up some. Any help is appreciated. I can't wait for the season to begin


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## Grizzly Adam (May 5, 2017)

I would lay off anything that contains phosphorus or iron. You are well above on both. The iron will likely disipate by the end of summer, but I wouldn't add any more without a soil test showing that it did. Everything else looks good to me, I wouldn't touch the pH.


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## Don_Julio (Aug 16, 2021)

Grizzly Adam said:


> I would lay off anything that contains phosphorus or iron. You are well above on both. The iron will likely disipate by the end of summer, but I wouldn't add any more without a soil test showing that it did. Everything else looks good to me, I wouldn't touch the pH.


I see it says I'm low on potassium in my front lawn. I have some Stress Blend Fert that I purchased from Yardmastery. It does have 3% Iron though. Maybe I will use that in the fall??? I will first be going with just straight Urea the first few weeks but trying to figure out what to use after. IM thinking of going with Espoma fert, Im in New Jersey and it's manufactured here. What do you think? Im low on sulfur and it contains 1%

https://www.espoma.com/product/fall-winterizer/#tab2


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## Grizzly Adam (May 5, 2017)

That sounds like it should work.


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## corneliani (Apr 2, 2019)

There are multiple ways you can go about this with the products you have on hand - there are no absolute right or wrong ways - but I personally would go with the StressBlend as my first apps ... roll over to the organic Espoma for the summer, and finish up with that Urea in the fall as you did last year. I would highly consider throwing down some generic Lawn Lime to bump up your pH to a 6.5. (A bag or two over your entire lawn should suffice.. hopefully your soil report will have some more detail on that).

Here's a plan:
Round 1 (March/April) - One or Two bags of pelletized $5 LawnLime, and 3#/1000 of 7-0-20 (7.5lbs of product over your 2500 sqft). If you spray Prodiamine consider melting some of your Urea and spraying a low rate (0.23#N?) alongside your pre-em for a quick boost/greenup. Or consider doing an even lower rate every two weeks or so, if you like to spray foliar apps. This is a great way to add straight Nitrogen to control growth as you see fit.
What's the logic here? 
- Since you fed your turf late into the season last year you may not want/need the push of heavy N coming out of winter. There's a residual effect to that feeding, plus there's a natural growth surge around this time as well. Too much growth here can use up the carbohydrate reserves the plant built up, which will be needed come the hot summer months. 
- The SOP in the StressBlend will boost up your soils K levels, which you need. 
- The iron oxide in this fertilizer isn't the most soluble form so no need to worry too much.. and the light application of LawnLime will help bring you up closer to the ideal 6.5pH as well as mitigate against the excess iron (iron availability is reduced in higher pH soils). It's a win/win vs using straight Urea, imo.

Round 2 (May) -same as above, minus the Lime.

Round 3 (June) - 6#/1000 of the 8-0-5 Espoma (half of the bag, coincidentally). This fert uses feather meal & chicken poo as a slow release nitrogen source, and Sulate of Potash for a gentle K input as the weather heats up. IMO it's perfect timing for this product.

Round 4 (July)- remaining bag of the Espoma.

Round 5 (Sept) - StressBlend at bag rate, or Starter Fert if overseeding.

Round 6+ - Urea.

This is just me brainstorming as I looked over your soil report (not too bad, btw) and seeing what product you have on hand. I'm assuming you've got a 'highly maintained" lawn and you shoot for about 4#N, per Rutgers recommendations (https://njaes.rutgers.edu/FS633/)


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## Don_Julio (Aug 16, 2021)

corneliani said:


> There are multiple ways you can go about this with the products you have on hand - there are no absolute right or wrong ways - but I personally would go with the StressBlend as my first apps ... roll over to the organic Espoma for the summer, and finish up with that Urea in the fall as you did last year. I would highly consider throwing down some generic Lawn Lime to bump up your pH to a 6.5. (A bag or two over your entire lawn should suffice.. hopefully your soil report will have some more detail on that).
> 
> Here's a plan:
> Round 1 (March/April) - One or Two bags of pelletized $5 LawnLime, and 3#/1000 of 7-0-20 (7.5lbs of product over your 2500 sqft). If you spray Prodiamine consider melting some of your Urea and spraying a low rate (0.23#N?) alongside your pre-em for a quick boost/greenup. Or consider doing an even lower rate every two weeks or so, if you like to spray foliar apps. This is a great way to add straight Nitrogen to control growth as you see fit.
> ...


Wow!!! thanks for the detailed response. I will definitely go this route. I really appreciate your input and plan of attack.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

corneliani said:


> There are multiple ways you can go about this with the products you have on hand - there are no absolute right or wrong ways - but I personally would go with the StressBlend as my first apps ... roll over to the organic Espoma for the summer, and finish up with that Urea in the fall as you did last year. I would highly consider throwing down some generic Lawn Lime to bump up your pH to a 6.5. (A bag or two over your entire lawn should suffice.. hopefully your soil report will have some more detail on that).
> 
> Here's a plan:
> Round 1 (March/April) - One or Two bags of pelletized $5 LawnLime, and 3#/1000 of 7-0-20 (7.5lbs of product over your 2500 sqft). If you spray Prodiamine consider melting some of your Urea and spraying a low rate (0.23#N?) alongside your pre-em for a quick boost/greenup. Or consider doing an even lower rate every two weeks or so, if you like to spray foliar apps. This is a great way to add straight Nitrogen to control growth as you see fit.
> ...


I disgree with most of this. All this soil needs is nitrogen with maybe an application of maintenance of potassium, but you can defer to next year.

K is not deficient and barely needs a maintenance application.

Dont do any random amount of lime. Your pH is fine at 6.2.

Iron is not needed either.

Avoid phosphorous, it is high. Organics have phosphorous, so avoid them and milo (biosolid).


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## Grizzly Adam (May 5, 2017)

g-man said:


> I disgree with most of this. All this soil needs is nitrogen with maybe an application of maintenance of potassium, but you can defer to next year.
> 
> K is not deficient and barely needs a maintenance application.
> 
> ...


I concur. Especially with not adding random lime.


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## Don_Julio (Aug 16, 2021)

:?


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## Lawn Whisperer (Feb 15, 2021)

Don_Julio said:


> Hello everyone. This will be my first year making some data-driven decisions on my lawn. I did a renovation in my front yard last fall with TTTF and 10 percent KB. I added Urea weekly until the winter. It did great.
> 
> I did an overseed in my backyard with PR 70% and 30% FF. I threw down a starter fert and then followed up with Urea towards the end.
> 
> Below are my first-ever soil test results that I just got back last week. Can anybody please help me in understanding what I need to do? I see my PH is okay but I don't know if I should bring it up some. Any help is appreciated. I can't wait for the season to begin


It seems that you have 2 soil test results but they're missing the recommendations and one has the graph cut-off. I recommend logging on the website and select a crop code(s), re-generate the reports, re-post to include analysis, graph, and recommendations.

It seems that the front lawn potassium levels are below optimum, and the other (back lawn?) is within the optimum range.


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## Don_Julio (Aug 16, 2021)

Lawn Whisperer said:


> Don_Julio said:
> 
> 
> > Hello everyone. This will be my first year making some data-driven decisions on my lawn. I did a renovation in my front yard last fall with TTTF and 10 percent KB. I added Urea weekly until the winter. It did great.
> ...


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## corneliani (Apr 2, 2019)

damn. 
Tough crowd. 
Now I gotta choose between sitting here and trying to elaborate, or hanging out with my little dudes before dinner & bedtime routine. I may get back on later but in the meantime I linked to your local university, Rutgers, which had some great detailed information on exactly what you're asking. I added that link after posting, and you'll see their recommendations for yourself. I'm growing TTTF in Atlanta, not NJ, so some nuances may differ... but numbers are numbers everywhere.

116ppm of potassium for a cool-season lawn is just barely enough... a maintenance app at the least is recommended. Will your turf roll over & die if not supplied it? Nah, you probably won't even notice. But since you have product that is overwhelmingly potassium-heavy, I say use it. Exactly how much is a matter of math + preference. Are you doing just maintenance, or will you do some soil loading? If you add up all of the potassium in the fertilizer the way I broke down in my earlier post (off the cuff, if I may add)... it comes out to just about 2#/1000. That'll bring your K levels up by approx 40ppm. Thats just about your maintenance rate, if my math is right.

As for the "random" Lime ... I know @g-man is not a fan of lime, and not at that pH. And I'm not sure what @Grizzly Adam used to conclude that it's "random". A pH of 6.1 isn't too low, I agree (i'm very curious what your lab recommended on this btw). But the argument was made that it is more of a mitigating factor for the high iron that your lab was able to extract out of your soil sample. Bumping it up to 6.5 is not so taboo, esp if it may help you with your Iron fears. As for my "random" recommendation of 40-80 lbs of lime over 2600sqft.... depending on your soil type and the myriad other factors that go into this recommendation, you'll may bump your pH anywhere from .25-.75 on the pH scale. I'd go into the math but I gotta run.

EDIT" I see you uploaded the reports while I was typing this up. Looks like they're not recommending lime yet (fair enough, no biggie) and potassium at a 4:2 - 4:3 N:K ratio.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

corneliani said:


> damn.
> Tough crowd.
> Now I gotta choose between sitting here and trying to elaborate, or hanging out with my little dudes before dinner & bedtime routine. I may get back on later but in the meantime I linked to your local university, Rutgers, which had some great detailed information on exactly what you're asking. I added that link after posting, and you'll see their recommendations for yourself. I'm growing TTTF in Atlanta, not NJ, so some nuances may differ... but numbers are numbers everywhere.
> 
> ...


MSLN defines potassium deficient at 37ppm. The OP has 162 and 116. That's plenty. There is no need to load the soil more. The lawn will use 0.5lb for every 1lb of N.

The amount of lime a soil needs depends on multiple factors (buffer pH). The lab will do the calculations and post them. The updated charts have some quantity to get it to 6.5 (~20lb/ksqft), but I advise to leave it alone. Anything between 6.0 and 6.5 is good enough for me.

Adding lime wont mitigate iron until you get to a high pH (~8), but moving the pH to 8 will cause other process. The level of iron in the soil test wont cause harm.


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## corneliani (Apr 2, 2019)

g-man said:


> MSLN defines potassium deficient at 37ppm. The OP has 162 and 116. That's plenty. There is no need to load the soil more. The lawn will use 0.5lb for every 1lb of N.


Are we officially going with MLSN guidelines, over the Sustainable method?? I'm all up for progress but I dunno.. this kind of reminds me of that story where a man finally taught his horse to go without food, only for it to 'unexpectedly' die on him :mrgreen:

As far as the OP is concerned, with a newly seeded turf and all, maybe the safe call is to go with the lab SLAN recommendations this year(?). Or you can opt for the Nitrogen-only route, test again in a couple years and see where you stand with your potassium levels (??). As you can see there are different philosophies. You have enough K fertilizer on hand to last you 5+ years, no matter which philosophy you follow. You can either load your soil with excess nutrients, at the risk of losing some over time to leaching/etc, or you can keep it in your garage until you hit those Minimum Levels of Sustainable Nutrition.


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## Ridgerunner (May 16, 2017)

corneliani said:


> g-man said:
> 
> 
> > MSLN defines potassium deficient at 37ppm. The OP has 162 and 116. That's plenty. There is no need to load the soil more. The lawn will use 0.5lb for every 1lb of N.
> ...


@corneliani What do you mean by "Sustainable method"? Are you referring to a maintenance program? (The data from one soil test really isn't sufficient to develop such program although a @g-man points out, you could work from the generic data of 0.5 lbs (9ppm) of potassium for every pound of N applied.) Or, are you referencing the "Sufficiency" method (SLAN)?
IMO, g-man wasn't promoting the MLSN method. He identified the MSLN value for perspective, the lowest K value at which turf has been found to still perform acceptably.
The true value of a soil test is not to set specific finite targets, but to identify any extremes that could result in poor turf performance and to set a base line so that the results from future testing can be used to identify nutrient levels that could result in observed turf performance issues.
As always, if it ain't broken, don't go trying to fix it.
Hope you don't perceive this as me "Piling on."


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## Lawn Whisperer (Feb 15, 2021)

High P and high in iron, curious if this lawn was previously maintained with with Milo.

In regards to pH, I would apply the recommendation lime 11# & 23#/M to get the soil pH to 6.5. Soil pH result is an average of the soil sample provided. Your soil can be 6.1-6.2 throughout your lawn and at every depth, but it's likely just an average of different parts and depths of your lawn.

To address the K in the soil. The recommendations from the lab is to get in to the optimum levels likely using the K saturation of 2-4% and/or K:Mg ratio of 1:0-1:5. Having a higher Mg than K is not known to cause issues until Mg saturation is over 30%.
On that note, is your K broken (deficient) - "not broke". Will it hurt to add a lb. or two of K - "unlikely". Will adding K help - "maybe". This will allow you to use common fertilizers sold in big box stores with N and K.
The YM Stress Blend contains biosolid, likely to contain P. The Espoma 8-0-5 contains poultry manure which is known to contain P also. Just because it doesn't list it in the bag it doesn't mean it's phos free. If you decide to put some K down, I would go with SOP 0-0-50 or MOP 0-0-60 during spring.

If you want to get rid of the YM stress blend that you have, you can use it late spring/early summer.

Since you did a reno and overseed in fall, I would continue to spoon feed urea this spring.


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## corneliani (Apr 2, 2019)

Hey @Ridgerunner . Nah brother, I always appreciate good discourse. It's how I learn best.

I'll admit to being a bit perplexed to being rebutted so pointedly in my recommendation to the OP. It seemed like the annual amount of 2.4# K2O that I recommended was considered excessive and unnecessary .... not to mention the lime application (which turns out the lab recommended as well; i didn't see that initially). So yeah, seeing MLSN being referred to as the reason why no K2o was recommended made me wonder if something changed since I was last active on here. To your point, a maintenance app itself would be approx 2#k2o/year. But I am curious about MLSN levels now, and if maybe that SHOULD be the method we should follow on the turf side (??).

By the way, I appreciate the reminder that a soil test isn't as much a GPS, where you're given an exact destination, but more of a compass used to get a baseline and direction. I think that's something that we all can be reminded of since the tendency is to try to hit certain numbers/levels. So yeah, thanks for "piling on" :lol:


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## Don_Julio (Aug 16, 2021)

Lawn Whisperer said:


> High P and high in iron, curious if this lawn was previously maintained with with Milo.
> 
> In regards to pH, I would apply the recommendation lime 11# & 23#/M to get the soil pH to 6.5. Soil pH result is an average of the soil sample provided. Your soil can be 6.1-6.2 throughout your lawn and at every depth, but it's likely just an average of different parts and depths of your lawn.
> 
> ...


I did Milo maybe once last summer. I actually used Starter Fert a few times when I did an overseed on my front lawn last spring and then decide to do a reno in the fall. And in my backyard I had two huge trees cut down and had to throw down seed in the late Spring/summer with no Tenacity. That turned out to be a mess. I had crabgrass all over my backyard. I I ended up blanket spraying the majority of my backyard with quinclorac and finally did an overseed last fall with more starter fert. Im pretty sure its the reason why I'm high on Phosphorus. I even ended up with grub worms. All that was a learning experience for me. I'm a newbie as you can tell and just trying to do the best I can to have a nice decent lawn.


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