My garden has worked so far . . . famous last words I know. True, some hard rains swept away several lettuce starts, and I believe little green worms have all but conquered the broccoli. But, hell. It all grew!!! For this miracle I am truly grateful. Now, onto a bit of planning and foresight for next season. Which happens to be this fall in the case of fruit trees, berries, garlic and several other items. All the leftover horse manure from this land’s previous owners will not last forever, and some plants actually want some different goodies.
Our good friend Pat brought over some soil tests he procured through Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. In digging up some samples, our goal was to identify the current status of the soil. After drying the bunches out overnight, I measured out about a cup from each of our larger testing sites and mailed it off to 
the lab. Results came back after two weeks.
For the area I plan to dig up for more veggies next summer, Calcitic Limestone in large amounts was recommended (currently the area is so acidic from the horse manure, high in Nitrogen, that I need to ‘lime’ it to lower the pH, which will help in actual fruit/veggie production for most veggie crops). Phosphate was also recommended. For the area I’ll plant with fruit trees, Gypsum came up as a recommendation.
Charts accompanied the results, as well as directions on when and how to apply to some extent. I’ll give this all a shot, as well as some of my own hare-brained ideas. My goal is to be able to meet the soil-replenishing nutritional needs of this land and my production demands from it with 
materials/extra vegetation and compost items that we make and assemble here. I’m shooting for as soon as possible . . .
In the meantime, I’m mulching my asparagus and melons, zucchini and cucumbers (a bit late), to help retain moisture as we head into the heat of the summer. I weeded first. And I’m hoping against hope that this straw is pretty weed free . . .
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