Organic landscape maintenance programs usually focus on restoring natural balances in soils.  In most of Austin, we can count on a few general assumptions (highly disturbed, alkaline clay soils with minimal organic material) to create a general soil restoration plan.   Topdressing the lawn with compost will add organic material, beneficial microbes, and nutrients, and is our favorite clutch shooter when we need results.

But we’ve recently learned that this lean towards standardization can be very dangerous. 

Our new favorite client Mary Ann lives in a historic home in Hyde Park.  We were called in to replant the small patch of St. Augustine in the backyard, after two unsuccessful attempts by another company.   After deciding to try a mix of native short grasses as a non-traditional alternative to St. Augustine in the full-sun back yard, we were about to kick things off by using our good ol’ standby:  compost. 

Mary Ann explained the previous company had also prepped the soil using compost both times, so a little red flag went up.  A couple pokes around the soil revealed a massive infestation of grub worms, red flag number two.   We decided to have the soil tested by the South Texas Soil and Plant Lab, just to make sure there wasn’t something weird going on.  Good thing we did.

The test results showed extremely high levels of nitrogen.  In fact, the nitrogen was so high, it most likely would have burned those seeds we were about to spread and prevented them from germinating, which would have made BioGardener look pretty BioStupid. 

So Mary Ann took the results to George at GeoGrowers, who recommend some pretty extreme measures to correct the problem.  Stuff that’s usually considered a gardening sin, like, working shredded hardwood into the soil to eat up the excess nitrogen.  We would never do that under normal conditions, but it makes perfect sense for Mary Ann’s soil.

So the moral of the story: test the soil.  It’s usually a good idea to test before starting any new projects, creating a long-term maintenance plan, and after the first round of corrective amending to avoid over-correction.  Re-testing at least twice a year will help keep things on the right track, and is a better approach than guess-and-check, which can be pretty devastating to the wallet, and ego.

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