John & Bob's Soil Optimizer

Can anyone recommend this product? We're still trying to break down "hardpan" after construction of our house 4 yrs ago. Checked out the website and it looked pretty good. But I don't want to invest until I do more research.

Thanks for any input.

Can you give us a link to the product site?

We used gypsum, compost and a cover crop to get rid of the hardpan in our garden.

Sorry 'bout that! The product is John & Bob's Soil Optimizer. Here's the link: www.johnandbobs.com

I would really love to know if anyone has used this product with success.

After wading through the John&Bob's website, I finally found a description of the ingredients. It looks like a combination of humic acid, calcium and iron. They state that their calcium is from two "secret" ingredients.
I've never used the product but I have added micronized calcium, iron and humates to my garden, which does indeed improve the soil structure and quality. Is the Soil Optimizer expensive in your area? Hopefully someone who has actually used the product will respond.

garden mermaid - sounds like you're smart, now why aren't you rich? LOL well maybe you are. I am still interested in hearing more about this product, or what you do, which sounds like it amounts to the same thing!

too funny PrairieGirl! I'm very good at coming up with ideas.....unfortunately it's other folks who make money off of them. One day I'll hopefully cash in on my ideas myself.
I've been studying sustainable biological agriculture of late as I want to get nutrition back in my food. You will find more info on this on the high brix threads:

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/688415/

That is fascinating, but I'm nowhere near ready for that yet. What is "hardpan'?

Hardpan is the mind of a woman who hasn't gotten her way. LOL

Disrespect the shakti at your own risk Steve!

No, Soferdig -

hardpan is the skillet that we menfolk get whacked in the head with for bein' disrespectful...

Here's a description of soil hardpan for you PrarieGirl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardpan


carbo, is this product new on the market? If so, it may be awhile before someone can respond with an answer. If the product is not terribly expensive, you may want buy a bag and give it a try. The only thing that concerns me about the product description is that they want you to apply it twice a year. That's a good business plan for them, or for someone who doesn't want to learn about building their own soil health.
The humates, such as listed in the Soil Optimizer product, are created by the biological activity in the soil. This is a probiotic combination of bacteria and fungi (mycorhizae). The Soil Optimizer product does not indicate any live culture. I would want to build up the good biological population in my soil.

What do you want to grow on your hardpan? Lawn, trees, landscaping, veggie garden?

Impervious to water, wow, I thought clay was bad. Thanks for the link, mermaid. Do you use worm casings?

garden_mermaid: God bless this forum and people like you to keep us from spending foolishly. I guess I'm just so anxious to begin flower beds on horrible soil, that I'm grasping at straws and looking for the miracle amendment. Patience is not one of my virtures!!!!

After growing up in an area with pretty good soil and adding peat moss and cow manure each spring I was able to grow almost anything. Now moving into a new area with ROTTEN soil and starting from ground zero is so frustrating. The first summer I moved in here (2002) I did no planting at all but bought bales and bales of peat moss and bags and bags of cow manure and tested and tested the soil and practically broke my back digging up rock, stones and boulders. In 2003, we gave up and built a raised bed and planted rhubarb (my favorite), blueberry bushes and raspberry bushes. They are doing quite well!! Now I want flower beds but I don't want to invest the time and money to plant in crappy soil.

I'm in zone 6 so the ground is frozen right now. Is there anything I can do to start now? I am really intrigued with worm composting. But I could certainly use some advice!

Thanks

Hey PrairieGirlZ:
How ironic that your hometown is my maiden name and my husband was born and raised in Rockford IL!

That's very cool, Thornton is such an idyllic name. (Rockford is north of me, I'm practically in NW Indiana). Nice to meet ya carbo, what does your handle mean? :0)

My handle is one my husband gave me a long time ago, don't ask me why. My name is Carol Bovi, hence the carbo and 3595 was the address of the first apartment we lived in.

Real deep, huh? :)

Like Room 222? Now you have to look that one up, LOL.

Hi carbo: have you thought about making a lasagna bed? It may be a little late right now to impove you hardpan, unless you have access to all the materials you will need. There is lots of info in the Soil and composting forum about how to do it. I have three going now, not one is the same as the other ones. But all of them start with cardboard (newspaper might be better), have layers of leaves (not very shredded but at least a year old from the municipal leaf pile), horse manure, some cowmanure, spoiled hay (this should really go closer to the bottom than I have it) and I am a great coffee grounds collector (nitrogen) I have three Starbuck's and a Whole Foods place where I get lots and lots of them.

I started the first bed in November and the last one just the other day (small) and have been adding as I got stuff. I don't know whether I'll be able to plant them, i.e. whether they will be sufficiently decomposed, but I understand that people have set perennials right into a newly "constructed" lasagna bed. Read some of the other threads about lasagna gardening.

I realize that this is off-thread, but since you were asking about getting rid of hardpan I thought this was not so inappropriate.

Good luck.

Clementine: I'll take advice from where ever I can get it. I thank you for the info and I'll check out "lasagna gardening". Thanks again

Lasagna is great, and sure takes a lot of the hard work away at amending and improving soil.

Karen

Clementine, I don't think you are off topic in suggesting the lasagna bed technique. It is a great way to deal with hardpan. Carbo has already invested too much sweat equity for the return she is getting!

Carbo, have you already amended manure and peat moss into the areas you are now wanting to work?

Yes, garden_mermaid: I have amended some last spring and summer and piled the ground up leaves on that area this past fall. But I feel like it's futile. Lasagna gardening is sounding more and more like the solution here and probably a heck of alot cheaper than having a truck load of loam delivered!!! Oh my aching back!!!

So with what little reading I've done on lasagna gardening, I'm gathering that you treat it pretty much like a compost pile. Just keep adding stuff to it without turning it like I do in my compost bin. Is that the basics or am I missing a big step here?


I'll take any advice you've got. I'm desperate and frustrated!!!

This message was edited Jan 30, 2007 8:51 PM

Carbo: My lasagna beds are quite big, probably was a mistake to make them that big (greedy, greedy). Even if I wanted to I could not turn them. But from what I understand about lasagna beds you don't have turn it, you just let it rot down. That is the beauty of it, like Karen says, it takes most of the hard work out of making garden beds - although I would say, I worked pretty hard to set up the beds initially.

But I expect that after this all I'll have to do will be to weed out stray weeds and to replenish the beds regularly with more layers. Anyway, once you are started you are good to go. I have read about people makeing the lasagna bed, then pushing the layer aside in spots, setting in perennials, and then pulling the stuff back over. See if you can get Patricia Lanza's book from your public library. Actually, there are two books, one is very detailed, the other one deals (sufficiently) with small gardening.

Good luck, keep us posted.

Thanks Clementine for your encouragment. Bear with me as I try to send a pic of the area I'm talking about. Because of the hardpan we have, we've lost alot of the topsoil that the builder had laid down. We tried growing grass in the area, but we kind of gave up. We just rather amend the daylights out of the area for now and make a huge garden out of the area. Less grass for us to have to mow.

I'll take any advice/suggestions anyone has.

My soil was just like yours but I had less soil and more rocks. I chose the raised beds and have never stopped using those again and again. This is the site of my garden and you might change your mind and lay the raised bed over the poor soil. http://davesgarden.com/journal/d/t/Soferdig/1717/

Oooh carbo, I feel for you! If that's what your yard looks like AFTER all your amendments, it looks like all your work has been washed away. Am I correct in thinking the yard is sloped? On a positive note, those are some nice looking rocks on either side of your hardpan. They'll look nice with a few herbs tucked in between.

Now that I see what you are up against, here is what I would do if it were my yard:

1) Add gypsum at ~15 lbs per 100 square feet. Gypsum does a great job of conditioning the soil and loosening up hardpan. Try to rake it into the surface of the ground it possible and water it in.

2) Add a layer of 1-2" layer of compost over an area that you will want to plant the soonest, lasagna layer the other areas. (The purpose of the compost layer is to give you something to plant a cover crop into. We want to use the roots of a cover crop to bust up the hardpan. ) Moisten the compost layer.

3) Broadcast the seeds of a cover crop over the compost, along with some all purpose fertizer and water them. The cover crop mix should include a cereal grain like rye or oats and some tap rooted subsoilers like the vetches or vetch and brassicas (eg daikon radish). I like the Soil Builder Mix from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply. It did a superb job loosening our hardpan. You probably have something similar from a farm supply on the east coast (saves shipping).
http://tinyurl.com/yn3dcc

4) Cover the newly sown area with a horticultural fleece row cover. Hold the row cover in place with stones, bricks or similar. You do not want to use the wire staples that are often sold with row covers because these will tear the fabric. The row cover will come in handy for many garden uses and will last ~ 4 years if you take care of it (by now puncturing with staples for a start!) The purpose of the row cover is to hold in moisture and warmth and to hold the newly applied compost in place if it rains. Keep the row cover on until the plants are about 4" tall and are pushing the row cover up. You will need to check for moisture under the cover from time to time, just put it back afterwards.

5) Once the cover crop is about 4" tall, the plants should be covering enough of the ground that you can take off the row cover and then just water as needed. You'll want to let the cover crop grow to about a foot tall before you mow it down and either turn it under or plant through it. This will take about 6-8 weeks, during which time the roots will be burrowing their way down through the ground. Take your garden fork out and stick in into the ground to test how the ground is doing. You can add more compost or composted manures while the cover crop is growing if you like.

The ground at our community garden was a clay hardpan. Even after a week of soaking, my DH still had to take a grub hoe to it. No way I was going to do that or ask DH to do that for me when I was asked to prepare one of the common areas. We used the cover crop and it passively did it's work and it was very easy to put in the garden fork and turn it. I've since taking to just mowing the cover crop down and planting through it.

Long winded answer. Hope that helps.

Soferdig: I think you hit the nail on the head!!!! I think this is the beginning of the solution here. Because we already have rock walls on either side of the garden, why not just continue with rock and raise the whole bed and start from scratch with some good healthy, wholesome stuff. Now I'm really excited. Also looking at your photos, I might even consider a water feature! The property is sloped over there and this might help controlling runoff too.

OMG - this website is addictive and I might have to remortgage my house to accomplish everything I would love to put in there. But your pics really gave me food for thought. Now, back to the drawing board. Thank God it's January and still cold enough that I can't do much out there. This will give me more time to plan and prepare. Thanks again for all your help, you've been awesome!

Good luck with your garden! Please keep us posted on your progress.

It is fun to get the joy of plan being made. You are infectious carbo have at it. By the way I hadn't changed the photos in my garden site in a couple of years. Take a look at 2006 now.

Steve, did you use raised beds on the lawn part too?

No it was spred with about 3" of poor loam over the glacial moraine. So I have been using Milorganite, wood ash, lots and lots of peat, and I airiate it 3 times a year with deep holes. I also have used lots of manure in the beginning that was nearby that had composted10 years. You can see that in the hot summer the worst stuff doesn't do well. This is September. Oh by the way I have ruined with large equiptment the back yard 4 times in placing hardscape and building beds. That lets the grass get ground in to the soil to "fix" nitrogen. LOL

What kind of tree is in the center of the last bed? (Did I ask you that before, seems I might've). Every time I see your place, I want to go to Montana. Then I remember the biggest sky you ever saw, and the stars, oh man, it's so clear there you can see up to Heaven. Then I really want to go to Montana!

This company has been in the GWD for two years (almost to the day...they were added on 1/27/2005): http://davesgarden.com/gwd/c/3816

I'm kinda surprised no one has rated them yet, so if anyone has experience with them, I hope you will add your review.

There are other companies that sell humic acid/humates for use on hardpan soil (umm, we also have definitions for that and other similar terms here: http://davesgarden.com/terms/search.php?search_text=hardpan&Search.x=0&Search.y=0 ) in the Watchdog, so you might take a look at their feedback before ordering, or add your own if you've ordered from any of them previously ;o)

Garden_Mermaid -

That was a really wonderful explanation of how to improve soil. It will definitely be useful to me. Can you tell me, when you mow down the cover crop, if you don't turn it over and just plant through it, doesn't it grow back and crowd out what you have planted?

Thanks
Diviya

It's usually not a problem if you mow it down close to the ground. I usually thrown a layer of compost on top and find that the seedlings I transplant will be big enough to shade the surface before the cover crop gets a second wind. Occasionally something will grow up and I'll just trim it back if it gets in the way or leave it as living mulch. I have yellow sweet clover growing underneath my current crop as a living mulch.

garden mermaid,

How to you do sweetclover? Do you fall plant it or spring plant it and let it grow one season to tap deeply in the soil?

Indy, if I had enough garden space to leave a portion "fallow", I would let the clover grow up one season and let it bloom to feed the bees and sweeten the air. Since I have only one raised bed and limited space, I tend to broadcast it around underneath the transplanted seedlings and let is just grow as a living mulch.
It is gets too big in some areas, I just cut it back and throw the cuttings in the compost or worm bin.

I don't like to have bare spaces in the bed. What I was noticing is that when I pulled one season's crop there would be areas that were rather bare until the next season's crop sprouted and grew up. The cover crop grows slowly and a little leggy when it's shaded by the main crop and then rousts itself when I pull that crop and plant new seedlings (it gets more sun then). I trim it back a little around the seedlings if needed. It may not look very neat, but it seems to make the soil better and keep the plants and microbes happier over all. I guess I'm kind of like a deer grazing on the plants I want to eat and leaving the rest. :D

I've also noticed that I harvest more if I start everything in a flat and just do continuous succession planting of seedlings rather than sowing seeds directly - trying to maximize what I get out of my small plot.

Elliot Coleman describes a system of undersowing rotating cover crops in his book The New Organic Farmer.

I started doing the same thing last year when I came across some beautiful clover in the nursery. They have spectacular leaf color and golden to red flowers. Trifolium or Atropupureum the new ones could be a garden on their own. This is a shot of them to the right I dont have the ones with crimson leaves and yellow flowers. Very beautiful.

Steve I had not seen your Montana Journal before. It was just great to see all that you have done. i do envy you your beautiful large rocks and being able to place them where you want them. I have two ugly large round edge rocks that came from excavating for the cement slabs for the house those 12 years ago. I haven;'t time this morning to look at your latest pictures for the Montana journal but will do so soon.

Donna

There are some other products I ran across that are similar

http://www.natureslawn.com/index.html

I am considering purchasing because we just built our house and our soil is very poor, clay, rocky soil.