Thank you Cindy!
I read quite a few excerpts from the book this week and I see what you mean! I'm taking a long overdue look at my "soil" too and I am going to get some testing done for a change and see if I can't move a little further from the completely hopeless category

Dirt - Solomon's book may help you with your soil. If nothing else, getting a soil test was a great help for me and I resisted it all these years.

If it's any help, I did pay a fee to growabundant.com to use their Organicalc spreadsheet and get access to info for one year. Being new to the whole soil thing, I thought it would help confirm what I had worked out on paper, which it did. You fill out the Organicalc spreadsheet with your soil lab test results and it spits out a report with recommended soil amendments based on all of the lab info. I did get an email with personalized recommendations from Erica Reinheimer who helped write the book. Since I've subscribed for one year, I'll do another soil test in the fall and use the spreadsheet for a second time - basically $4.50 each for help on two soil tests.

Personally I do not like the book!
Dumping huge amounts of salts onto beds would raise the electrical conductivity of the soil.
Many of the trace metals are better if added in chelate form so they then do not raise the electrical conductivity of the soil.
Most water soluble fertilizers contain the trace metals as chelated forms.

That's a new term to me in relationship to garden soil, just what does that mean and how does it apply to the garden..."Electrical conductivity of the soil"?
Well, sounds pretty complicated....
http://www.lsuagcenter.com/nr/...

Well, it seems that dumping huge amounts of salts onto the beds would raise the electrical conductivity of the soil, but that is like saying watering the garden would raise the electrical conductivity of the soil (if I am understanding this correctly). So it seems that raising the electrical conductivity of the soil can actually be a good thing or a bad thing.
However adding a huge amounts of salts is still not a good thing because it seems to kill off the biological organisms that live in the soil. I just learned that is called soil-salinity.
http://www.smart-fertilizer.co...

oh my,
yes--it can be rather complicated!

consider this: water conducts electricity, right?

As a sort of baseline, distilled water has a very, very low EC because the ions, all the various dissolved charged particles, have been removed.

A 'salt' is a generic term for any molecule composed of a positively charged particle and a negatively charged particle stuck together when they are dry or in a solid form. When the salt is dissolved in water it breaks apart into the individual charged particles, the ions--cations have positive charge, anions have negative charge.

The EC of water increases with dissolved salts--the flow of current in the water in the soil is proportional to the concentration of ions dissolved in the water. So, this gets measured and interpreted as the 'salinity' of the soil.

The thing is, though, the EC measurement does not tell you what ions are responsible for the increased conductivity. For that you actually need a measurement of the major ions.

Or you can guess based on your local soil type. Like in our area we have high sodium in our soil and in our irrigation water so, around here, a routine soil test is "pH, soil salinity (ECe), P, and K" and if the "pH is greater than 8.2 together with moderate to high salinity (ECe > 2 to 4 dS/m)" this is interpreted as "a problem with excess sodium." They then recommend confirmation with testing the sodium adsorption ratio (SAR).
This is certainly an example of 'bad' salt.
It drives me crazy that the routine soil tests around here do not measure the major cations and we just assume sodium is to blame, but, like I said, we have high sodium so that's how it's done.
Other dissolved salt components, of course, are considered important nutrients for plants, (well, actually sodium is an important nutrient too, it's just bad in excess) like calcium and potassium.

In other areas with really sandy soil and lots of leaching, the EC is relatively low. People are actually trying to raise the EC by adding fertilizers and the EC is frequently used as a quick measurement to monitor this.

From my perspective, it seemed to me like the takeaway idea of the book (or at least the portions I read) was to
1.) analyze your soil and 2.) amend based on the results instead of guessing

So for example--if I have high pH and high EC, with sodium and magnesium excesses, it might actually help a lot to displace some of the sodium and magnesium with calcium. The goal and the result, if done properly, would not be to increase the EC by adding salt, but rather to change the relative proportions of the major cations involved in the already high EC.
Now, if only I had rain water!!

Dirt - thanks for explaining that in novice terms. I tried to follow some of the links but couldn't even tread water through them.

Some plants can not take much Electrical Conductivity.

Caroline - I did pick up on plant preferences for EC in the links and I had hoped for more info on those. What little I know about chelates is that they are easier to absorb but then I got side-tracked into pros and cons along with scarcity and cost in searching for more info. I to plan to add feather meal and kelp meal (which are the predominant ingredients) along with some of the sulfates (a form to lower my pH a bit).

It is very complicated and difficult to sort the science from the anecdotal.
I know about the EC damage only too well.
After a good rainy period---if plants look on the yellow side----I will sprinkle some Epsom salts.
I have done that for many plants, but one time I had a nice stand of Campanula carpatica
which had yellowed. I did the same sprinkle of Epsom salts and they all died.
I had no idea why?
Then I was reading some of the commercial growers information, and that said to avoid high EC with these.

Well, in my area we have one of the largest magnesium mines in the country and while Epsom salts may be a miracle treatment for some folks' plants in other areas, it is really contraindicated here, in principle and practice.

http://www.gardenmyths.com/eps...

Again, the value of knowing what you're actually deficient in is Key to adding stuff!

CarolineScott said:Some plants can not take much Electrical Conductivity.

Boy do I know this! and they don't like high pH either

We are still buried in snow, but as soon as I can get to my 'soil', I am going to find out much more than I know now
Thank you again Sue and Cindy for the links on labs!

I do have a problem area where foliage has turned red ¡Ay, caramba! Anybody ever see yarrow struggle w/red foliage? quite a sight!
I moved it outta there and it recovered and is doing fine, but clearly something is amiss in that area. I've never added anything but good compost; same compost that goes everywhere else. I did use a pile of dubious soil there though. It will be very interesting to learn what the samples reveal and hopefully it won't be impossible to fix

Apologies for running the thread way off from where to find manganese sulfate

Dirt - I don't think you ran off with the thread. I'm learning from it all! Are you planning on getting a soil test done? It was enlightening to me and might explain why my plants don't do as well as I thought they would. I haven't used a general fertilizer in years although I do use a little bit when planting. I thought compost and mulch would "fix" everything but that's not the case.
I finally have all of my ingredients on hand but I won't work on any blending until late March/early April when I can apply and dig them in. I figure that will give several weeks for the things to start working together before planting.

Yes, I am!

dirtdorphins said:Thank you Cindy!
I read quite a few excerpts from the book this week and I see what you mean! I'm taking a long overdue look at my "soil" too and I am going to get some testing done for a change and see if I can't move a little further from the completely hopeless category