Re: [MittleiderMethodGardening] Salt in soil
Mindy, Jim and group,
I live in Western Colorado and we have very alkali soil. That means salt. The problem we have is that you can make your soil but the salts will leech up. The Extension office here has done some trial raised beds using cloth barriers laid about 12-18 inches down and then layered pebbles and sand then soil. It's been some years since I've seen how they did it and it was not something affordable for the backyard gardener and very labor intensive in the beginning. What I found is that I can not grow most varieties of bush beans. That has been the one crop that consistently did not do well. That was a huge disappointment but in the years since discovering all this I've started growing scarlet runner beans along my fence. They do not seem to be affected by the alkali soil and they are edible when they are picked small and cooked. As always with gardening, trial and error is our greatest teacher. But groups like this are also so helpful!
Lynn Perrizo
Lynn, Mindy Group:
To grow in alkali soil - if the SALT level is not too high - simply use gypsum for your calcium source, and add some sulfur to lower the pH.
Jim Kennard
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 6, 2016, at 8:23 AM, jennyology Jennyology@aol.com [MittleiderMethodGardening] <MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
I'm interested in this discussion because of a situation that occurred in our yard. We moved to our new home several years ago and the previous owner mentioned that she didn't have good luck with the garden.We thought we would try to start fresh so we set up the Square Foot Garden method including buying bags of their soil. It started out well, but as the months wore on things stopped growing and were stunted.The production was low and we were pretty frustrated.The second year was worse. I started hundreds of plants inside that were growing well but as soon as I put them in the garden, they would stop growing. We thought maybe they weren't getting enough water so we stepped up our watering.An important fact is that we use well water to water it. It's not attached to our home, just to the sprinklers.Near the end of the growing season I began to wonder if it was the water that was the problem. I took a sample of our water to our local water treatment facility and asked them to check it. Turns out the water is salty.We immediately started using our culinary water on the garden and it started to improve.It's still not growing very well though and I'm wondering if there is something we can add to the soil to help it be balanced. With so many years of salt water on the soil, is there any hope?Thanks,MindyMindy Group: If the soil is too salty the very least that needs doing is flushing it thoroughly with clean salt-free water, and it probably needs doing several times.You may be better served by getting some sawdust and sand and starting over.I trust you are not feeding your plants balanced nutrition using the Mittleider Magic Pre-Plant and Weekly Feed mixes according to the recipe. No matter what your soil mix is, this is essential for healthy plants.Jim Kennard
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Posted by: "Lynn C. Perrizo" <lcperrizo@yahoo.com>
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