Garden Soil - Keep It Fresh

Gardens are a joy and pleasure, especially when the vegetable garden planting can be a success. The proper garden soil is the key to keeping your garden in top condition. A soil test can be the best way to create a plan for how to fertilize and best care for the vegetables in your garden. Do you need a soil conditioner? Are you using the right fertilizer? Would liquid fertilizer be best? When you discover the soil conditions, these questions can be answered. There are many options for testing the soil in your garden.

You may choose to send a soil sample to an outside lab, or you may prefer to use a store bought soil testing kit. If you choose to send the soil from your garden away to be tested, here are the basic steps you must take. Soil testing labs will give you instructions, test kits for the soil, and forms that will need to be filled out.

How To Prepare Soil To Test

Gardeners are to gather the soil by breaking up lumps of soil to be tested, then leaving the soil to be air dried at room temperature, with only natural heat, no artificial heat. When the soil is dry, the testing soil should be crushed into lumps that size of small grains or even smaller. Usually, there will be a soil sample bag from the testing kit where you are to put one pint of the composite soil sample.

When you take your samples, take them from your garden between rows to avoid fertilizer bands. Take the soil to be tested from below the top layer of debris, residue, or thatch. Best time to take a sample is when the soils are ready for spading and plowing. Another really important point is that when you take soil samples to test your gardens, make sure you take different samples for each soil that is a variant in color.

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