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Soil SampleDoes your soil make the grade? Here's a simple, inexpensive way to put your soil to the test. |
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Transcript: Soil Sample
In order to have good quality soil, you want to be sure it has the right balance of nutrients, and the way to tell that is with a soil test.Here in a garden that's been rototilled quite a bit or been spaded and the soil turned over, you can certainly take a scoop out of the soil and have a pretty good representative sample of what the plants are growing in. However, if you're going out into a lawn area or perhaps an orchard where the soil isn't mixed, you want to take a vertical core of soil.
You can do that by taking a scoop out of a side of a hole with a shovel, cutting the sides away, and then putting this sample into a clean plastic bucket. You do this in a number of different areas, and then mix them up and that gives you a good composite or average of what the soil is like. If you just take one sample, it might be a place where Rover stopped last year and that might throw your soil sample off quite a bit.
You want to use a clean plastic bucket. If it's had fertilizer in it and hasn't been washed out, that will throw your sample off, as well.
Then take the composite out of the bucket and place it in a soil sample bag. Now the Extension office, your county agent, has various types of soil samples. The standard bags and then one that's used more often for lawn and gardens. Whichever type you use, you'll send the sample off to the lab and for about 10 dollars, the results will come back to you and your agents as well. So if you'd like to call them on the phone and discuss what additions might be necessary, you can do that.
With your common sense tip on sampling your soil, I'm Skip Richter.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006