Re: [compost_tea] Tea For Turf - Compact Soil - Looking For Resources?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 01:52:29 -0500

No truth to the grass clippings causing moss.

Typically, moss means a couple things. Compaction. Lack of air into your soil, water puddling on the surface. The soil goes anaerobic. Moss is now more competitive than grass in this soil condition. A major factor is that iron has been put into a plant unavailable form when it is reduced. If air returns to the soil as the soil dries, then the iron just becomes even more plant-unavailable.

Your soil chemistry test will tell you there is plenty of iron. But because harsh extractants were used to pull that plant unavailable iron out of the soil, that test means nothing. You have to get the biology back into the soil in order to make that plant unavailable form of Fe into a plant available form.

In general, phosphate is too high, and calcium too low in soil where moss is rampant. So, lots is wrong. You have to add Ca, since it is flat out lost when things go anaerobic. You have to get fungi back into the soil, since they are what holds onto added Ca. Otherwise you are wasting your money, you lose so much of the Ca you add.

You have to tie up the excess phosphate too, and getting the biology to grow and take up that PO4 is about the only way to do this in an economic manner.

You need to get the organisms back into the soil to convert plant not-available Fe into plant available.

So, tea! Compost! Get the good critters back itn othe soil, and feed them! But you need QUALITY compost, not any stinky, smelly organic matter! There are standards.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
http://www.soilfoodweb.com


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Received on Tue Mar 23 2004 - 02:40:37 EST

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