Cooperative Extension Service at Virginia Tech. The results you receive in the Soil Report will indicate whether the levels in your soil of phosphorous (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), and magnesium (Mg) are High (H ), Medium (M ), or Low (L ). Regardless of the fertilizer recommendations conspicuously printed on the front of the Soil Report with your test results, it is very important to read the detailed print on the back of the sheet. There you will find, amongst the detailed print, the information that you need to make an informed decision about whether your trees may benefit from fertilization. It says that “When soils test Medium, plants sometimes respond to fertilizer. When soils test High to Very High, plants usually do not respond to fertilizer.” (my emphasis) As I understand this, even if my soil tests only Medium, there is a fairly good chance that my trees won’t respond to fertilizer, and the
odds are high that they won’t respond if the test results show a High rating. This information, however, is at odds with the recommendations that are presented conspicuously on the front of the sheet. For example, most of my fields test somewhere in the High range, and here and there a particular nutrient will test out at M. Nevertheless, the Soil Reports that I receive recommend that I apply fertilizer to these fields. But, based on the detailed print on the back of the Soil Report, my trees are not likely to respond to fertilizer. So to repeat, it is very important to read the detailed print on the back of the Soil Report sheet to decide whether your trees may benefit from fertilizer rather than relying on the recommendations for fertilizer presented with the results on the front of the sheet. A little extra time reading may save you quite a bit of time and money!
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VCTGA News Journal –Spring 2012
VCTGA News Journal – Spring 2012
Because most of my fields test somewhere in the High range, and some in the Medium range, I see no reason to incur the costs and possibly contribute to water pollution by fertilizing my trees. However, because the soil analysis does not include results for nitrogen (N), which would require a foliar analysis rather than a soil analysis, I won’t know whether my field has sufficient N for growing nice trees. Rather than automatically fertilizing with N just to be safe or just in case the trees might benefit, I can make a more informed decision about whether or not to apply N by conducting a simple field experiment. So, after having a soil analysis done, this experimentation is the second step in determining whether trees may respond to the application of some kind of fertilizer. Below, I report on five field experiments that I carried out beginning in 2008. By the way, an earlier experiment that I conducted with N
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