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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Thursday, September 15, 2022
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Little Ketchup
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Grittyville, WA
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Entry 193 of 228 |
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The things that went right this year are limited, so instead Id like get to the bottom of all the things that went wrong.
One of the main things that went wrong was the ground where I grew a pumpkin the previous year, I thought it would be at least halfway fertile, but instead of halfway fertile it was in reality 100% imbalanced or depleted. The bioassay I did early in the year said the ground wasnt good, but I did not believe it. I should have believed it.
Instead, I figured just a little fertilizer and amendments would bring the ground back to life and all would be well. But, instead there was a serious imbalance and/or deficiency all year long. So, the ground I thought would be at least halfway fertile, yielded almost nothing! It was terrible. And the worst part is I dont really know why. I can guess, excess potassium, lack of zinc and boron, and lack of available phosphorus, and perhaps some excess aluminum (which really means there is almost no ph buffering going on) and last of all, excessive soil oxidation despite doing things in a no-till manner. These dont seem like easy problems to solve, other than to buy a bunch of humic/fulvic acid, and basically start over. Maybe the chemical fertilizers are as bad for the ground as tilling (which at this point would probably help). I did use bone meal, etc. But I could find no panacea this year, maybe all the more natural fertilizers also add the wrong kind of salts or something.
I will step aside and let nature figure it out. Other than trickle feeding blue fertilizer and solarizing, nothing I am doing seems to be an improvement upon what nature can do. And so far the solarizing sterilizes the surface nicely but its far from effective against the weeds with rhizomes a couple inches down.
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