Soil Testing: Not Such A Wonky Pain In the Butt Anymore

As a master gardener, one of the things I’m supposed to advise people to do is get a soil test before they start plopping plants in the ground. I admit that I’ve chafed against having to say this forever because, honestly, I’ve had a garden for 15 years and I’ve never tested my soil.

Also, I once asked a big group of master gardeners if any of them had tested their soil and not one of them had done it either. Instead, we all admitted to relying on the lazy gardener strategy of putting plants wherever we wanted to and just moving them someplace else if they didn’t do so well. Second time’s not a charm? Move that plant again, we say. After three strikes, hey, give the poor thing away to a new home where it might luck out and get more doting parents.

Of course there are exceptions to this lazy approach. If you want to grow something with specific needs like blueberries, for example, you need to know the pH level of your soil (they prefer a pH of 4.0 – 5.0).

Another good reason to abandon the lazy route—just for a sec—is when you feel like plants in certain areas aren’t doing so hot no matter what you put there. This happened to me over the last couple of years in two different spots in my yard, and I’d just started considering getting a soil test when a horticulture professor friend told me that do-it-yourself soil test kits are much better than they used to be and there are several on the market that offer fast, reliable results.

Sold! And that’s silly, really, because it’s not like it would be a big deal to scoop up soil from a few spots in the yard and send it off to the University of Minnesota Extension Service for testing. But I never did it. Something about the scooping and the mailing and the waiting for results to come in the mail just seemed too wonky or cumbersome or something. But testing my soil myself at home, well, that’s something I could do.

So I did some research and chose the Luster Leaf 1601 Rapitest Soil Test Kit , which makes it easy to test the pH, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium levels of both outdoor and indoor plants. Each kit contains 40 tests, 10 of each type, so you can test nutrient and pH levels at several different places in your gardens.

The instructions are included, but basically all you do is collect soil samples, mix the soil with water and dissolve a test capsule that turns the water different colors depending on soil nutrient and pH levels. Then compare the color from your test to Luster Leaf’s handy color-coded charts, which have already informed me that nitrogen levels in my backyard gardens are too low for good plant growth. The pH level, though, is 6.5, which is good.

I don’t normally like to add more than compost and shredded leaves to my soil. But now that I know for sure that I need to boost nitrogen, I’m going to add some alfalfa meal to those garden beds. Cottonseed meal and bone meal are also good, organic choices.

And I guess I may start talking up soil tests a bit more this season, too.