[APWG] What caused surprise results in Poppy Project?--Test soil for soil nutrient thresholds

[craig at astreet.com]

Dear Robert and All,
Thanks for your email.  Actually I love
the colors in the test tubes of the $10 garden store test kits vs. the
soil lab PPM numbers, because everyone can understand colors but the PPMs
do not have the immediate impact that colors do.
As far as I know,
this idea of doing soil tests before establishing natives in the place of
weeds, and the issue that some weed problems are just symptoms of soil
nutrient problems, originated with the classes that I taught to the USFS
in nine Western States and the classes with Caltrans, 1992-2000, and
contrast with some long held theories of natives, weeds and soil nutrient
levels.
There are the adequately funded weed and restoration projecs
that can afford a few thousand dollars on lab soil tests, but if we did a
survey of the readers of these discussions, I would bet that there are a
whole lot of volunteers or barely funded projects, where a $10 garden
store test kit would be fairly easy to purchase and use.
It is like
having a gas gauge that gives you a rough idea of how much gas you have in
the tanks vs. one that can measure the remaining gasoline in grams.
 At least the $10 kit gives you a rough indication where your
nutrients stand, is it full, half full, 1/4 full---or empty like I found
for potassium at the Arastradero site.
I think anyone working with
the star thistle, Italian thistle, Saharan mustard, cheatgrass or medusa
head grass, will be very surprised, when you go out and do the soil tests
by any method, and see how these weeds that were formerly feared as
aggressive invasive species, are just benign cow and sheep antibodies,
covering the soil to keep it from getting airborne.  
You will
see that these Default Weeds are actually doing a great service for us,
trying to save the topsoil for us, so that we can being back the nutrients
and get those areas fertilized above the thresholds needed for local
native seedling survival.
I have watched for decades in my local
city and county parks, hundreds of volunteers annually pulling star
thistle, italian thistles, and medusa head.  Wouldn't it be nice if
just the addition of some fertilizer once to those lands, could have
eliminated those stands of weed?  That is what we did for the
cheatgrass in the Great Basin on the 600 acres of BLM land north of Reno
in the 1990s.
I will be interested in hearing from anyone who tries
this technique on some of their Default Weeds.
Sincerely,
 Craig Dremann (650)
325-7333
=======================================
 
 
 
>
Hi All

>

> Most home soil test kits are useless based on my experience
comparing

> their results with legitimate (University) lab results. Nitrogen or
even

> N0 3 levels are impossible to accurately gauge due to the fact that
this

> nutrient is constantly changing in soils in form and availability
over

> even short periods of time. Even home pH testers are woefully
inaccurate.

> I would never suggest a fertilizer program without bona fide data to
back

> it up. I am not aware of any laboratories that provide nutrient
guidelines

> for native plants in the Northeast, but this may not be the case in
the

> west. Most of our university soil labs (sadly) can recommend
nutrient

> levels for agronomic crops or ornamental crops only!!

>

> Apparently this what you did on BLM land. Glad that at least some
labs are

> doing this!

>

> I like the concept of "default weeds". All weeds are
default weeds in the

> sense that they grow when conditions grant them the opportunity

> (opportunistic weeds?) Some thrive in nutrient poor soils while
others

> thrive in soils that have far too many nutrients as is the case here
in

> the northeast. Farmers plant lagoons of reeds and cattails to suck
up

> extra nutrients and most waterways that are lined with exotic weeds
are

> overloaded with nutrients also. The biomass that plants such as
knotweed

> (formerly Polygonum cuspidatum) produce each year is astonishing to
see

> along many waterways here and this is due to high nutrient levels.
Wish

> that someone would harvest this stuff and burn it for energy instead
of

> planting willows and adding 75 pounds of N per acre to get them to
grow

> well.

>

> Of course there are other factors such as soil organic matter levels,
soil

> compaction (surely an issue in overgrazed land?) and possibly
allelopathic

> effects of exotics.

>

> I do like the quick and dirty idea of actually observing what is
going on

> and then trying to address the specific problems, instead of
simply

> spraying herbicides on the exotics and hoping that the natives will
return

> on their own. Unfortunately, that approach has seemed to dominate
invasion

> biology thinking for far too long but when funding for
"restoration" has

> come from weed killing entities, it is to be expected.

>

>

>

>

>

> ________________________________

>

From: APWG [apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] on behalf of

> craig at astreet.com [craig at astreet.com]

> Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2013 4:34 PM

> To: apwg at lists.plantconservation.org; craig at ecoseeds.com

> Subject: Re: [APWG] What caused surprise results in Poppy
Project?--Test

> soil for soil nutrient thresholds

>

>

> Dear Robert and All,

>

> Thanks for your question.

>

>

>

> About testing for the soil nutrient threshold, you can do it at
least

> three ways:

>

> 1.) HOME TEST KIT. Use a simple garden store soil test kit on at
least

> three locations for a native species--(a) Where you see native
seedlings

> surviving, (b) Where you see established native plants and no
seedlings,

> and (c) No native plants nearby existing native plants. It costs
about

> $10 to these three tests.

>

> 2.) SOIL TESTING LAB. Do these same three tests but send them to a
lab and

> have the N-P-K-pH run and get the threshold for each species in PPM
for

> the nutrients. That is what we did on the BLM land for the 600 acres
of

> pipeline north of Reno.

>

> 3.) WATCH THE PLANTS. Sow native seeds or seedlings either on site or
in

> ex situ test pots, and add measured amounts of fertilizers to see
the

> responses. Use a native that easily shows nutrient problems, so you
can

> correct any problems rapidly so the seedlings do not die on you
before you

> can correct the problem. I use the California poppy and the
broad-leaved

> California brome, because they have a rapid response to nutrient
problems.

> A species not to use, is the Stipas or the needlegrasses, because
their

> responses are slow and they have very narrow leaves that are hard to
read.

> Broad leaved grasses or fast growing forbs are best.

>

> Once you find your native seedling soil nutrient thresholds, you can
then

> take a look at local weed infestations, and see if the root cause of
their

> spread, instead of being invasive plants, is that they are only
Default

> Weeds, able to grow where the soil levels are too poor for local
native

> seedling survival, like cheatgrass, thistles, medusahead, etc.

>

> I also use this technique of checking for soil nutrient problems
by

> watching the leaves, for my Haiti farming project, with corn to
check

> N-P-K and pepper leaves to check calcium, that you can see
information at

> http://www.ecoseeds.com/clear.html and http://www.haitiag.org.

>

> Sincerely, Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333

>

> ====================

>

>> So, did you test the soils for nutrient levels? Have you learned
the

>> optimal nutrient levels for the natives that you are trying to

>> reestablish

>> and compared them to the soils you are now working with?

>>

>> ________________________________

>

>
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