The RECOMMENDATIONS For IAL Lab Number 1692 – Native Dirt Future Orchard

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Add Per 4x4x3 Tree Hole:

30 lbs. Custom Tree Planting Mix

Made as Follows.

16 oz. Bloom 10-52-10

14 oz. K-Mag

9 oz. Epsom Salts

1.5 oz. Copper Sulfate

3 oz. Iron Sulfate

1.5 oz. Zinc Sulfate

3 oz. Manganese Sulfate

1/3 oz. Solubor

4.5 lbs. Granular Humates

4 lbs. TMB

2 lbs. Transplant Formula

½ lb. Kelp Meal

16 lbs. Soft Rock Phosphate

Note: This custom made tree planting kit can be purchased from Luke Lemmers at 952-239-2042. Each 30 lbs. should be mixed with 48 cubic feet of soil. As far as mixing soil with 50% compost I would advise caution. 50% might make your soil high in sodium. 10-20% seems a more prudent level. The Hoop House soil has excessive sodium and conductivity, we want to avoid that under your trees.

A long term goal for your trees might be to leave a layer of 1 foot of woodchips on top of the soil to keep the soil cool and reduce evaporation. I would like to see driplines below the woodchips. For more information see Back to Eden film and notice his apple trees in the desert region.

This doesn't make much sense to me:

"As far as mixing soil with 50% compost I would advise caution. 50% might make your soil high in sodium. 10-20% seems a more prudent level. The Hoop House soil has excessive sodium and conductivity, we want to avoid that under your trees."

From the native dirt test results:

The new orchard has nothing whatsoever to do with our hoophouse.  I realize now that we SHOULD have had the compost tested, but we didn't know yet what we were going to use. 

We're 60 miles from Kingman and over 100 miles from Las Vegas and that's as far as we're willing to drive to get compost without sewage sludge. We got 1 yard in Las Vegas at Viragrow, but found that it's actually cheaper (considering fuel for the big truck and time to go to Vegas) to purchase bagged products at the Home Depot in Kingman.

I finally got a pallet of 50% AMEND (Kellogg, OMRI listed and without sewage sludge, enough for about 3.5 tree holes) and the AMEND SDS sheet is attached below.  It's unfortunate that Kellogg won't disclose the amount of each ingredient because it's their "trade secret". 

How can I decide how to amend my planting mix without that info?  Have to pay for another test ...  Although I doubt that Amend is so high in sodium that it will cause a problem.

Also, I didn't realize that IAL would give me chemical recommendations (I checked the box for "high brix") and my efforts to purchase organic recommendations were a waste of time as my emails to IAL were ignored.

I will elaborate in detail on the recommendations and what we're actually doing in a new topic. 

The entire soil test, the recommendations and the Amend SDS sheet are attached.  Ouch, they will be attached once I figure out how to get attachments working.