Soil Testing: An Invaluable Step In Gardening

Dave talks with Anne Welles about how to test your soil to make sure it has the right nutrients in it to foster healthy growth in your garden.

David Epstein: One of these you got to hear conventional lot is to test your soil. Here you would not go to a doctor and start taking medicine without knowing what is going on. Why are you adding things in your soil without what is going on in there? You can not send your soil out, and that is a great thing to do but if you want to do it at home, that is pretty easy. But we got this kits and, Anne come on in here. What are we going to do here? These kits? Are this easy? Can I do this myself? Anne Welles: Yes, they really are, they are very simple. Let us start with an even a smaller one. There are two things that you can test for on these kits. One is the soil PH now that is a very basic test that everybody probably should do especially if you are starting out with new plantings. David Epstein: Okay. Anne Welles: And that is whether your soil is acid or alkaline or where it lies in that range. David Epstein: Great. Anne Welles: And what that tells you is whether the plant can get the right nutrients or whether they are locked up because the soil is too acid or too alkaline. Rhododendrons, Azaleas and things that like us who is loving soils is do very well here. Things that like alkaline soils are more neutral soils may have a little more trouble like lawns. The next thing to find out about your soil, other than just whether it is sweet or sour is whether you have got enough with the macro nutrients, and those are like what you always see on a fertilizer bag, the three numbers, you got nitrogen, and you have got phosphorous, and you have got potassium. David Epstein: Should I test in different areas in my lawn or just one? Anne Welles: You can do a series of tests in different spots in it or take a plastic bag, take a sample of a little cup from; let us say every three feet, different locations. Mixed it all together so it is uniformly mixed and then test a sample out of that mixture, lawns are based on a uniform tests where you would take a number of samples and then mix them together. David Epstein: Now you know, when you are taking a look at this numbers, the 18, the 22, the 14, are you suppose to be adding nitrogen? Should you be adding paddock or phosphate, that is what those numbers are, test your soil, know what you are suppose to add, it is going to help your plants grow a lot better. [Music Playing]