ORGANIC GROWING – TEST YOUR SOIL
If your passion is organic growing, testing your soil is vitally important. For healthy plants, you need to find out if the world they are growing in is missing anything. Poor soil is usually lacking in sufficient levels of nutrients to sustain plant development. By knowing what your soil lacks, you can amend the soil and in turn have a garden that is the envy of the neighborhood!
Testing your soil is much simpler than most gardeners suspect. You can buy soil sampling kits at most garden supply shops or you can purchase it online. If you have different soil conditions throughout your garden, you may need to test each area. For example, a flower garden, a vegetable garden, and a field will all have different needs and the soil usually has a different composition.
You can also take soil samples from your garden and have the soil tested at local cooperative extension agencies. For example, we recently had our soil tested by a local university that had an agriculture department. We took them two samples – one from our organic vegetable garden area and one from where we grow only grass. We told them what we were growing and in a few days they gave us an informative report on what we needed to do to improve growth. The cost was seven dollars per sample.
To prepare your soil for testing, you will need a shovel, several non-breakable containers (a plastic bag or plastic sealable container works great), a marker, and a bucket. Take several samples from the areas you want to be tested. Remove any debris from the soil and allow it to dry. Place the samples in the containers after they have dried and label each one with your personal information and where that particular sample came from in your garden. If you have chosen to test the soil yourself, prepare the soil samples according to soil test manufacturer’s recommendations.
The soil test will let you know what you may need to add to your soil. Common items included in a soil test are your soil’s Ph level, nitrogen level, potassium level, and phosphorus level. These are the four most important nutrients contained in your soil and can easily be augmented or controlled based on what you add to your soil. A high Ph level means your soil is alkaline and a low Ph means it is acidic. Adding peat moss, nitrogen, or even sulfur can lower your soil’s Ph based on the results of your soil test, while adding something as simple as a nitrogen-rich organic fertilizer is all that is needed to augment nitrogen-deprived soil.
Test you soil on a regular basis. To help with the organic growing that we now do, we check our soil twice a year – once in early spring and a second time before fall planting. We do one of these tests ourselves with a soil testing kit we purchased at Amazon.com, and the second test is performed by the local university. Keep in mind, the nutrients in the soil required for an organic vegetable garden are different than those required to grow grass.