 Backyard Farming in the River Valley Podcast
January 15, 2010
Soil Testing (4:48 minutes)
(4 minutes:
48 seconds)
WMV (high speed video)
Audio/Video Script:
Dustin Blakey, County Extension Agent – Interim Staff Chair
Jesse Bocksnick, County Extension Agent – 4-H
[Title slide - Backyard Farming in the River Valley with Dustin Blakey and
Jesse Bocksnick. Soil Tests. University of Arkansas Division of
Agriculture. Drawing of a person carrying a basket of apples in an apple
orchard.]
[Dustin] Hi, this is Dustin Blakey with the Sebastian County Extension Office.
A lot of people have problems with their gardens throughout the growing
season and many times they attribute those problems to issues with their soil,
so naturally they would like to have a soil test. Well, it turns out that a soil
test probably not the world’s greatest diagnostic tool for problems, and more
than likely the problems they’re having with the garden probably aren’t related
to their soil.
By and large, most gardeners ,if anything, over fertilize, but soil testing
is an important thing to have done to your garden, especially in your
vegetable garden. The reason is there’s no way to tell by looking whether or not
you need to have lime in your soil, whether or not acidity in your soil is
correct. And it does help to some extent to tell you what is going on in your
soil for the home gardener so, benefits of soil test to a gardener is going to
be you’ll be able to know which fertilizer to use to get the best agronomic
response. You could always use more, but that’s sort of wasteful and it can
present problems for the environment. We don’t really want extra nutrients out
there that we don’t need. Also, if you do need lime the soil test will give you
an indication. Lime is important to soil that is acidic because sometimes
nutrients will be in the soil but there not available to the plant because the
soil is too acidic. Over time if you fertilize, the nitrogen will tend to make
your soil more acidic.
So let’s talk a bit about how to take a soil sample. You can use all sorts of
different types of tools to do a soil test. Some are fancy. Here I’ve got a soil
probe that’s made specifically for the purpose [Dustin shows a soil probe], but I have some other tools that
you can use too and these can vary. Here’s another type of soil probe [Dustin
shows a soil probe], a little
cheaper than this fancy one but this one has a foot deal on it. And this one
doesn’t. [Dustin shows a auger] Here I have a big old auger you can use if you have really rocky, bad
soil you and need a lot of work to get that dug up. These are pretty expensive
and most people don’t have them, so it’s probably not going to do much good.
[Dustin shows a shovel] One of the best tools to take a soil test is the plain old shovel. This works
very well but it does tend to take a little more soil then you need. Most of the
time, in a home garden, I simply use a little garden trowel. [Dustin shows a
hand trowel] A little $1 trowel that I
got at the store takes a pretty good size sample and works very well.
Now, when you take a soil test what you don’t want to do is simply take one
scoop of soil from your garden and call that your soil test. Whether you’re
doing a garden or pasture or a big corn field you need to get several samples.
What you want to have is a sample of soil that represents the entire area that
you’re going to be growing the crop in and so to do that get several samples. On
our soil test we like to have four to six inches deep. Take as many of those
that you can bring yourself to do really, all over the garden. Take several samples ,
all the same size, and put them into a bucket. [Dustin shows a bucket] A five gallon bucket works
excellent for this job. Take maybe you know, five, six, ten, twenty samples all the same
size, all the same depth throw them into the bucket.
After you have thrown them in the bucket you will want to remove pieces of
rock, grass, and any kind of non-soil debris. Pull them out then take your
trowel and go ahead and stir it up really good [Dustin stirs with trowel in the
bucket]. From that stirred up soil bring
in to your county Extension office one pint. You can bring it in a baggie is
fine or any kind of zip lock sack - something like that. We have the correct
type of box you use to send off to the soil lab.
There is no charge to have your soil tested. The cost of soil testing is borne
through a tax that is on fertilizer in Arkansas, so it’s not going to cost you
anything. It will give you an excellent idea what is going on in your soil.
After you get your soil test you may not understand all the results on there,
and that’s perfectly normal. What you need to do when you get you results back
if you don’t understand them is call your Extension office and we can help
explain them to you, tell you what’s going on. Generally speaking what you want
to do is look at the part for a homeowner that says “crop notes.” Crop notes
gives you in English sentences instructions for what you need to do. The only thing
it doesn’t tell you is whether or not you need lime, and how much lime to apply.
You’ll find that on the section that says “recommendations” under the very last
column. That will tell you how many pounds of lime to put out.
If you have any questions about soil testing, or you want to get started with
it and you’ve never done it before, give your county Extension office a call.
We’ll get you started.
[Slide Questions? contact your county Extension office
dblakely@uaex.edu. U of A University of
Arkansas Division of Agriculture]
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