It all depends on your soil analysis but maybe more importantly as to what type of soil structure you have from your soil surface on down to about 24 inches or 60 CM where good daffodil roots “might” be growing and pulling up nutrients and moisture from by the END of the growing season!
Has ANYONE actually gone online and or sent in a sample of Turface or Cat Litter and got it checked out BEFORE they planted a $50.00 daffodil bulb in it? :-))
OK I bought 20 acres of an exhausted cotton farm BEFORE I ever thought about growing crops or daffodils for a non-profitable hobby…About the 1930’s our government paid to have ALL of the topsoil plowed up and then terraced ALL of our county farm land in East Texas to capture and conserve rain fall AFTER the horrible Dust Bowl years! So nearly ALL of our fields were scraped down to clay with berms of topsoil that follows the elevation of the land.
So our daffodil fields are nearly all in solid red clay so I NEED to “improve” the soil structure and nutrients CHEAPLY!
OK we have six different coal fired power plants within 15 miles of my house and they “sell” sieved “bottom ash” for about $2.00 a ton. Coal burns in these power plants at super high heat so the “ash” is almost like volcanic ash when it comes out of the furnaces. I have a gravely “sand to pea sized” grit that does NOT pack down. Below is the chemical or soil analysis from a “normal” or average mountain of this ash. Photos show a never ending supply and a $20.00 scoop or 10,000 pounds a scoop of Coal Ash. Below is I HOPE a readable list. Under Bottom Ash is WHAT the soil lab found in the coal ash sample. Under the “Onion Crop soils needs” is what Onions and MOST other crops and lawn grasses NEED in the soil as a minimum of Parts Per Million to have or grow an OPTIMUM crop or lawn. YOU HAVE to be careful with PH as Copper, Boron and Aluminum can be TOXIC at high levels at different PH levels OR just at very high levels of some of these minor elements!
Bottom Ash Onion Crop soils “needs” PH 10.3 PH 6.2 Conductivity 362 Conductivity (-) Nitrate-N 1 Nitrate-N 75 Phosphorus 20 Phosphorus 50 Potassium 37 Potassium 125 Calcium 11,405 Calcium 180 Magnesium 786 Magnesium 50 Sulfur 329 Sulfur 13 Sodium 244 Sodium (-) Iron 16.3 Iron 4.25 Zinc.05 Zinc.27 Manganese.35 Manganese.35 Copper.16 Copper.16 Boron 16.43 Boron.60
Basically I would like for you all to be aware that Turface and or Cat litter “might or will” have different clays and minerals in them DEPENDING on which mines these are coming from! Same for different “Bottom Ash” from different coal mines! Our coal in this test above is coming out of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Link below is a 1916 agricultural year book from Maine that talks about using “coal ash and coal slag” on farm soils since the world was short of “pot ash” or potassium since Germany quit exporting it years before the First World War.
For my soils I need to be careful as this coal ash has high levels of Boron and Magnesium. Sulfur is also high but the high levels of Calcium and high PH “should” bring down the sulfur over a year or so as these combine and react with one another. You “might” want to send in a sample of the Cat Litter and or Turface to be sure the salts and or sodium levels are not too high in some of these mines where they are bagging it up! Below is a link to a 1963 research paper (249 exhaustive pages) on using different amounts of “Fullers Earth” on Citrus Trees in Florida and gives the history of the amounts and the types of fertilizers and soil additives used in the Citrus industry in that state. LARGE file about 16 MB for those with slow dial up connections still. “Turface” is “Fullers Earth” BUT there are multiple mines that produce multiple chemical and mineral amounts in these generic labels!
http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/09/16/11/00001/Binder1.pdf
Expanded Shale is practically a neutral PH and it breaks down so slowly in various soils that there is little added nutrient levels from that but I am only quoting some professors that are using it on “Black Land Prairie soils” with a PH of 7>8 and NOT my average acid soils that were at about a PH of 4.5 to 5.2.
There is ALSO a LOT of research on the internet from experimental agricultural plant stations where they are utilizing various “Coal Ashes”. Lets see now, it costs about $25.00 to get a test done on what you are putting into your expensive daffodil beds, just how many $ worth of daffodils can a person plant in 100 square feet of flower bed??? :-))) Seems like the ADS could fund a few soil experiments:-))) Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas