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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Sunday, April 12, 2009
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shazzy
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Joliet, IL
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Entry 5 of 227 |
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greenhouses go up today after a final raking and gradual mounding to the planting sights. 15 yds of organimix dairy cow compost that ted krueger, "the compost king", personally put his finest touches on went down 4 weeks ago prior to the recent rains and snows and was tilled in along with 3 gallons of molasses. after a nice one week dry stretch, a nice deep final till was done yesterday incorporating in 150 lbs of "charcoal green" innoculated biochar and 480 pounds of gypsum. funny to watch the rear tined tiller sink in so the front end is up in the air. took off the restricter bar and it easily tills over 10" deep if you slowly work each individual spot in an up down motion before moving on. tons of centipedes and large crawlers under some boards in the patch that were left there after the fall tilling. we will see how all the ammendments help or hurt my season output in the long run. 100 lbs of sulfur was added last fall to bring ph down to the higher 6s instead of mid 7s. also added last fall to the 2100 sq ft patch was 100 lbs of greensmiths humic acid, 100 lbs of k-mag, 100 pounds of greensmiths calcite calcium, and 250 lbs of kelp meal. all of last years ammendmentments incorporated very nicely with the extreme rains and snows all winter and spring, and i am extremely satisfied with the way the soil looks. how it produces is another story since no soil test was done last fall or this spring. i know this is a cardinal sin to most growers, but i haven't officially had my soil tested in 3 years. i test my own soil ph and that is it. i know that the heavy amounts of biochar and humic acid will lock up some nutrients, but i have added plenty of compost to conteract that effect. gonna push the envelope this year in many directions and the soil was the first step. only time will tell how this experiment works out.
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