Soil Testing

I'm starting to get ready for next year, and I've been reading up on adding things like lime and blood meal and kelp meal and all kinds of crazy stuff to the soil to keep it from getting depleted of all its nutrients.  In order to know what to add to the soil, I had to test it.

I ordered a soil test kit from ACE Hardware.  I don't know if it was only available online, because it only had a Free Pickup in Store option.  After ordering, I got an email that said I would get another email when the kit was ready to be picked up.  It said that the order WOULD NOT be ready for pickup until I got the phone call.  I did not get an email.  I got a phone call.  If I wanted to talk to people, I wouldn't have ordered online!

Anyway, I picked it up today, and was super stoked to do chemistry.  Now, I'm sure I did stuff like this in high school chemistry, but I do not remember most of it.  I remember where I sat, but that's about it; I'm pretty sure I've blocked the rest.  Why I was so excited today, I don't know, but I got to work right away!

The first thing I did was dig out the soil from four different places in the garden, which was recommended.  It had to be taken from a depth of four inches.  I figured they probably meant to do that if you have a super large plot, but I did it anyway because I was a bit enthusiastic ...

The soil from all four sections had to be mixed in a 1:5 ratio of soil to water and shaken.  I chose to put them all in canning jars that I have stored in the garage.  I had a larger amount of both soil and water in the first two jars, then did a little less for the second two because I realized I didn't really need that much.  I shook the soil/water mixture up quite a bit and then let it sit.  The tests have to be done with clear water for ease of reading results.

Mid-read

While the soil was settling, I got to work on the pH test, since that required mixing directly in the tester.  It took about a minute to get the results.  All four soil samples could have been interpreted as either neutral or slight acid.

A few hours later, I decided that the soil had settled enough in the jars to proceed with the other tests.  Now, for each of these, you get a little capsule that you have to open up and pour into each tester.  Have I mentioned yet that I also got to use an eye dropped to put the water in the testers?  Whoo!  These three tests were for (left to right) nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus.

Right after adding the water

Ten minutes later ...

The colors of the soil samples look a bit different in the photos than they did just in the daylight.  The nitrogen test came out as deficient for all four soil samples., the potash test came out as sufficient for all four, and phosphorus was adequate for all four samples.  I wasn't really expecting anything different, but I had a lot of fun!

The next step is to figure out what nutrients to add to the soil so that my veggies grow really well next year!