The soil media used for the experiments was a mixture of 43%
certified organic top soil, 43% no-till farm soil collected at coordinates:
40.778633, 81.930873 and 14% sand. Soil was sieved to
less than 2 mm particle size and large plant materials, stones, and
other inert materials were removed. The chemical properties of the
soil mixture are shown in Table 4. The soil media was amended
with ammonium phosphate (Fisher Scientific, PA, U.S.) to maintain
a C:N ratio of 20:1 based on the carbon content of the test
specimen.