North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dennis Norton" <dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com>]

To,

We do something similar to the larger commercial farm, except without the 
GPS, etc..  We have 2 main orchards of 11,000 trees covering about 100 acres 
total which you can see at 
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com/pdf/upickguide.pdf.  Each 50 acre parcel 
is divided into zones for soil testing and irrigation.  We have a total of 
12 zones, each 50 acre parcel with 6 zones each.  We take soil samples from 
each zone as well as leaf samples and send them to 
http://www.algreatlakes.com/main.asp for analysis.  They give us our 
analysis by zone and we then follow their recommendations.


Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Olenio" <tolenio@sentex.net>
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 8:13 AM
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] soil testing


> Hi Jim,
>
> When dealing with 1-1/2 acre how many soil tests do you do?
>
> On a more modern, commercial farm many soil samples would be taken in a 
> grid format, the soil test results fed into an onboard tractor computer, 
> and a GPS system would guide the tractor through the tested area, blending 
> fertilizer specific for each grid point, as per the soil test results.
>
> What is optimal soil testing for the rest of us?
>
> Later,
> Tom
>
>
> On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 08:05:45 -0600, Jim Fruth <jfruth@uslink.net> wrote:
>
> > Mike,
> >     Since I earn my livelihood off only 1-1/2 acre, I double-crop 
> > everything
> > and have yet to observe any detrimental effects.  One word of caution
> > though: before double-cropping, be sure your soil fertility level is 
> > always
> > up to 'snuff.'  I have a soil analysis done every year.
>
>
>
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