A website from UGA Cooperative Extension

Soil testing is a very important part of growing a quality crop, having a good looking garden, having a quality lawn, or a good pasture. Soil testing gives you an insider look at what is going on in your soil. Let’s take a look at what a soil test can do for you and why it’s a good idea to have your soil tested.

If you have a garden at your house it’s a good idea to have your soil tested every other year. A soil test will show you the pH, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, zinc, and manganese levels in your soil. These are essential elements for plant growth. Nitrogen is also a very important nutrient for plant growth. However, nitrogen is very mobile in the soil. Therefore, you could test your soil and by the time that you receive your soil results back from the lab the amount of nitrogen in the soil could be drastically different.

pH is often the most limiting factors when it comes to growing plants in the mountains. A soil test will tell you the pH and the recommended lime to bring that pH up to an acceptable level for the plants. Any lime that is added to soil will take 3-6 months to fully take effect. That means for spring plantings, now is a good time to take a soil test and begin adding lime.

When taking a sample for your lawn, a depth of 4 inches is appropriate. If you’re taking a sample for gardens, ornamentals, mixed fruit trees, and wildlife plots sample to a depth of 6-8 inches. You can use a spade or a soil probe. When you take the sample it’s best to take multiple samples from around the plot that you are interested in. This way you’ll get an average of the area that you’re sampling and a better representative sample. Using a trowel or small shovel, take 8-10 samples and mix them together in a bucket. From that bucket take the sample that you’ll bring into the Extension office so that we can send it to the UGA labs. Make sure that you get enough soil so that the lab can test properly. About 2 cups of soil is needed.

If you’re sampling from an area that has mulch or grass on top of it push that material away so that you penetrate down to the soil. Pull out any rock or roots that you get with the soil sample and throw them away. When you take the sample, spread the wet/damp soil on a newspaper and let the soil air out overnight before bringing it in to the office, so that it dries down some.

When deciding how many samples you need to take, look at the area and determine how many different types of conditions you have. For example, if you have a low lying spot, a steep slope, and a wooded area, each one of these would need a unique soil sample done. When you receive the results from the lab they will have recommendations for you based on the types of plants that you have or plan to have. Bring soil samples into your local county Extension Office. If you have questions regarding the soil sampling or the results you can call your local Extension office or email me at Jacob.Williams@uga.edu

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