Soil Tests for the Family Garden – Necessity or a Waste?

The question is often asked if the family gardener should pay for a soil test before planting his garden.  Our advice is to not pay for a soil test.  However, a few students have discovered a statement by Dr. Jacob Mittleider in the book Food For Everyone (P 137) wherein he states that “The soil test is the beginning of operations…”.  Following is my response.

The book Food For Everyone was written in 1972, and at that time Dr. Mittleider was having soil tests done wherever he went, including numerous developing countries. However, over the ensuing years he learned enough that by the time most of his GARDENING books were published Jacob no longer used nor recommended soil tests, and here’s why.

Two reasons for soil tests were (1) to determine the soil pH, because plants are best able to take nutrients from the soil and use them when the pH is between 6.5 and 7, and (2) to determine any nutrient deficiencies in the soil.

Through long experience and field testing in gardens all over the world Jacob learned that whenever annual rainfall is 20″ or more the soil pH is below 7 (acidic), and the simple solution is to use lime – to raise the pH and to supply essential calcium.

When annual rainfall is 18″ or below the soil pH is above 7 (alkaline) and the solution is to use gypsum as the calcium source. It will not raise pH because it contains almost equal parts calcium (raises pH) and sulfur (lowers pH).  And Jacob learned that this was usually all that was necessary to grow successfully in high pH soils.

If the high pH in the soil continues to be a problem simply apply sulfur to lower the pH.

Furthermore, Jacob’s long experience with soil tests taught him that they often did not accurately predict the availability of the nutrients to the plants. The natural state of the many mineral compounds in the soil is to be “fixed” or adhered to the soil particles, and in order for the plants to use them the minerals must be water-soluble and pass in the soil water into the plant through the root hairs. That availability changes quickly, and a test taken last month, even if accurate at the time, may not be accurate today or tomorrow.

Jacob also learned that soils throughout the world were almost universally low in available nutrients, and he created a balanced formula containing all 13 essential plant nutrients that he applied everywhere in the world with great success.  And they are applied weekly throughout the growing season so that they are available to the plants as needed.

This knowledge allowed Dr. Mittleider to eliminate the need for soil testing, thus saving time and costs for everyone.  This is a tremendous boon, especially for the family gardener, because they have neither the time, the money, the knowledge, nor the patience to order and wait for soil tests.

“Chemical” Fertilizer or “Organic” – Which is “Bad”?

Recently two questions were posed to me by a Mittleider Method gardener who came from a background of using only manure and compost. This person asked:
1. What is the difference between the Mittleider fertilizers and “organic fertilizer”? And why do some “organic-only” users say ours are bad?
2. Do you not recommend building our own compost piles?

Following is my response: The fertilizers we use and recommend are natural mineral nutrients – ground-up rocks, some of which have gone through a simple cleaning and concentration process to assure we get exactly what we bargained for, which is “the most for our money”.

On this website, and in the Mittleider gardening books, CDs and videos we give the formulas in exact detail, so that everyone can purchase wherever they want and mix their own. We are NOT trying to “sell something” with an exclusive, secret fertilizer mix.

Furthermore, every one of the fertilizers used in mixing Mittleider Magic Weekly Feed and Pre-Plant mixes have been approved by the USDA for use in an organic gardening operation. Therefore, we believe that a Mittleider garden DOES qualify as an organic garden.

However, some folks have gone so far with the “organic fertilizer” thing that they won’t use anything but manures, compost, egg shells, blood & bone meal, etc. They believe that anything other than those constitutes a “chemical” and is somehow harmful.

The truth is that – as Organic Gardening Magazine’s J. I. Rodale said – “We’ve gone too far. . . a plant can’t tell the difference between nitrogen from a leaf and that from a fertilizer bag.”

Furthermore, everything in this world is a chemical. All the elements in manure, compost, blood & bone meal, and all the others are chemicals.

So how did we get into this mess?

Years ago people began hearing that things like DDT were dangerous to fish, birds, animals, etc. (which undoubtedly had some truth) and the movement to ban those substances gained momentum until many useful chemicals were totally banned worldwide.

And the final result is that each year millions of African children die of malaria when they could be saved simply by using DDT to eradicate the mosquitoes.

We humans often allow the pendulum to swing too far, and I believe it has swung too far in the organic gardening movement, when people refuse to use ground-up rocks that contain exactly what their plants need to thrive, and instead limit themselves to the use of materials the exclusive use of which kept 20-25% of our ancestors on the farm in order to feed the rest of us (today it’s less than 1%).

I’ve also seen the substantial pictorial evidence Dr. Mittleider accumulated worldwide of the problems unsterilized manure and compost cause in gardens, with crop-destroying diseases, bugs, and weed seeds.

In addition, we are now having major re-calls of vegetables grown with manure because of contamination with salmonella, e-coli (and maybe other harmful bacteria) that are sickening thousands.

So, if organic materials are CLEAN I say it’s okay to till them into the garden. But how many of us KNOW our compost and manure ARE clean?

Unless they’ve been composted aerobically at sustained (as in 3 weeks!) temperatures over 140 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever was in them – and whatever else may invite itself into the pile in the composting process – will end up alive and well in your garden.

So, to answer the second question, If you will compost your materials at a constant temperature of 140+ for at least 3 weeks – the way the “Zoo-Doo Man” did (see Zoo-Doo Man article that follows) – you can probably use them in the garden without worry of introducing the aforementioned problems into your garden.

But that still doesn’t answer the question about WHAT GOOD your compost is doing!

Does ANYONE know which nutrients, or how much of each, is contained in the compost or manure they are putting on their gardens? I believe there’s not one in 100 organic gardeners who submit their compost or manure to an accurate soil test before applying it to their garden. And so they are all guessing as to what nutrition they’re giving their plants.

In order to try and make sure they have enough nutrition, and to avoid the trouble of multiple applications, manure and compost gardeners apply the amount they hope will feed the whole crop ALL AT ONCE at the beginning.

This creates three problems:
1) Germinating seeds and small seedlings are often burned and killed by too much salinity;
2) excess fertilizer salts are sometimes leached into the ground water;
3) the nutrition from the manure gives out after a few weeks, and the crop stops producing just when it should be at its strongest.

I believe the points I’ve covered above explain to some degree why the Mittleider Method is referred to by many of its adherents as “the best of organic”.

You will understand why even more fully when you grow and/or SEE the results obtained in a good Mittleider garden.