- Healthy soil is the foundation
for everything that it has to do with a good garden.
But how do we know that our soil is actually healthy?
And how do we know
that it has all the nutrition that we need?
Well, the only way to really know
is to very carefully study your plants,
know every single thing you ever put in the soil.
But in reality,
nobody can really keep track of all that (laughs).
So, today we're going to be doing a soil test
and actually looking at the results in the end,
once I send them to the lab.
So first, let's go over
exactly what the soil test is going to look at
and how to collect your samples.
The soil test that I'm going to be using in this video
is from RX Soil.
The reason why I chose this test in particular,
is because it includes soil organic matter content
and cation exchange capacity.
So, the organic matter content is really critical,
especially if you're doing something like
a low tillage gardening.
It's the best way of actually tracking your soil fertility
as it increases over time.
So, that's what goes into this test.
And actually it comes with a simple little instruction.
Each box has it's return label already on there.
And so, let's get into the instructions
and collecting the sample next.
And I'll quickly mention actually
that I paid full price for these,
but I'm going to reach out to them and see
if there's some sort of little deal that we could make,
maybe, like, some sort of discount.
And if there is, I'll put that in the description.
The first question you want to ask yourself is,
how many soil tests do I really need?
Now in this garden over here,
most of these garden beds have been treated
in almost the exact same way,
I haven't really done anything differently across them.
So, I can basically treat most of this garden
as a single sort of method.
But, I don't want to just come to this one bed,
take a single sample and send that off to the lab.
What we're going to do,
is actually take multiple samples from across this area,
blend them together
and then take a small section of that to send to the lab.
That guarantees that we're not going to have,
like, an outlier, like maybe this bed
was very heavily planted in tomatoes before
and now there's very little of specific nutrients.
So, we want to blend as many as we can together
to get a more holistic picture of our garden.
Now, if there is something like a raised bed,
I'll probably want to measure that one separately
because that's very different from growing in ground
like over here.
So, I'll probably do two tests in this area
and maybe two tests in the other garden.
But first, let's figure out
how to sample these in ground beds.
In this garden, the areas that I'm going to sample
are going to be a transect from that side of the garden
to the other end.
So, I'm gonna take one against the fence line,
one from this bed,
one from the bed over here that has broccoli and peas,
and then the last one will be this garlic bed in the back.
That way I have a pretty broad representation
of this whole garden and that'll give me
a good understanding of what's going on
in the soil that's particular in this section.
So, now I'll bring you in close and show you
exactly how to collect a sample for your soil test.
This will be the first section of the garden that we test,
because it's the easiest to show you up close.
So, I'm going to go ahead and move the mulch aside and
we'll talk about exactly how to take the sample right here.
All right, so I have a clear container because
I want to show you guys what the soil looks like
in the different sections of the garden.
And then, I have a trowel here, my favorite, the Wilcox,
it has a inch scale on it.
So, we're gonna go ahead and push that in
until it gets to six.
This is just to give you guys a visual
of how to take the soil sample.
I probably won't be this careful
for every single future one.
Now, when it comes to actually taking your soil sample
you don't wanna just come across the top,
grab a handful and test that,
because that's not the reality of what your soil is.
This is the most recent stuff that you've added
and it's also just not really
where most of the plant roots are.
So, where we're gonna actually want a sample
is the range from two to six inches below.
So, this is at six right now.
So, what we're gonna do is go ahead and move the soil
until we get to two inches down.
So, there we go,
right there is the two inches down below the soil surface.
So, now what I'm going to do is take a trowel,
it's actual a scoop here,
and I want to take every single part of the sample
from the top down to the six inches.
So, let's see if I can grab that.
Actually, let's just go around and carve that out nicely.
So, there we go.
This is the bottom,
so that should be close to about six inches here
and this is about two inches from the soil surface.
So, this is a good representative sample
except for the fact that it's a little thicker up top here.
So, I'm going to scrape some of that away.
And remember, we're taking multiple samples
and blending them together.
So, this is going to be a good starting point.
I'm gonna go ahead and throw it in my container.
(trowel banging against container)
And now, we're gonna go ahead and take three more.
This is going to be sample number two.
This one looks a lot darker, much more organic rich.
So, that's an interesting contrast here.
And I'll be taking sample three from this bed over here.
There is a closeup of sample three.
Now for sample four of this garden,
I'm gonna go into the garlic bed as I mentioned.
If you're wondering why I'm blending four samples together
instead of taking separate samples
at every single one of these sites
to get the most realistic picture,
the reality is that this is a pretty substantial garden,
if I wanted to test every single bed
that would cost quite a lot.
So, instead I'm blending together
a bulk picture of this garden
and by doing that I'm saving quite a bit.
And this is really a sort of once a year,
maybe twice a year max sort of activity.
You're just kind of doing a checkup on your garden,
make sure you're not over fertilizing or under fertilizing
and just tracking that soil organic matter over time.
Here's what all four sites look like
when they're actually stacked on top of each other
in the container.
So, the next step is to actually mix this up
to get a more representative sample.
Okay, I just kind of popped them out
so you could see the visual difference.
The top one likely looks different
just because it's really dry.
But now, what we're going to do is mix them all together.
Now that it's all mixed up nicely,
I'm going to pick out things like worms,
put them back in the garden.
Any large rocks or sticks like that,
you don't want to throw into your sample,
like this big chunk of root,
I'm gonna go ahead and move out of the way.
But overall this stuff is actually pretty good,
there's not a lot of sticks and a lot of rocks.
So, now we just need to take a nice little sample here.
I feel like that's well mixed,
but I'm going to just scoop across the whole section
to give it one more chance to sort of mix up.
And then, we're gonna take our soil collection baggie
and fill it to the fill line.
All right, that's pretty good right there.
So, you could see you take quite a bit of soil
and then you mix it all up
to get a small representative sample.
That's why it's important
that you get as many different sections that you can.
And also why it's very important
that you mix it all together very nicely.
Because in the end you just have this small sample
to represent your whole garden.
So, now the next step is to just take your baggie,
put it in your box.
(box squeaking)
And then give it a nice press down to make sure it seals.
So, you want to keep the actual card itself, because
on the back it's actually has your little soil test number
and that's how you actually track it on the website.
So, now I'm gonna go collect the other three samples
that I planned to do and I'll show you where I take them,
(laughs) but I won't show you the full process
of collecting this again,
now that we understand how to take that sample.
Now we're over here in the north garden
and as you could tell it's a much (laughs) longer garden
than the other one.
So, instead of testing that raised bed over there,
which would just be one small four by eight data point,
I'm going to do those last three tests over here instead.
The first one that we're going to do is this one over here,
which is my no dig, entirely no dig bed.
The only thing I've ever done here
is layered it with compost.
So, that will be test site number two.
Test site number three is going to be these two beds here,
which have been double dug and lasagna bed layered.
So, these have been growing peppers very intensively,
so I'm curious to see how much of, like,
say the phosphorus and potassium have been depleted
compared to the nitrogen in the leafy green crops
like the ones over there.
And last but definitely not least, is my big bed over here.
I've grown tomatoes here now consistently for two years,
so I'm expecting this soil
to probably be the most depleted overall.
Now, this one I have added granular fertilizers
and compost as well.
So, I'm just really curious to see
how these different sections
of this particular garden compare.
(gentle music)
Here are the trays mostly mixed.
This is the no dig bed.
This is the middle bed with garlic and peppers.
And this is that big bed in the back
that I talked about the broad forking.
You could see there is a color contrast,
part of that has to do with the fact
that this is the driest.
But in general this looks darker and richer,
I think it has more organic matter.
(rooster crowing)
If you have extremely coarse soil
or you have a lot of sticks, you can sift it.
I wouldn't try to over sift it,
because you don't want to take everything out.
But this should get anything like say a stick
or maybe a couple of larger rocks
that you don't really want to send in along with your test.
Again, this is optional,
if you have soil that really could benefit from it.
And you should end up with something like this,
which is perfectly ready to go.
Before we mail these tests out,
I'm actually going to go ahead and register all of them.
That way when I get the results
it's automatically going to be connected
to the garden area I tested.
So you go to the website, create an account
and then once you're in, you could create a growing area.
So, let's do the large tomato bed.
(gentle music)
I'm gonna give it that name.
And then, it's gonna ask you what it is.
So, it's a garden.
(gentle music continues)
And, let's see, what type it is.
Let's say vegetables.
I'm gonna say leafy greens, just to be consistent here
since right now it is leafy greens.
And I'm going to select the product type organic.
I only use organic products if I do use them.
The reason why it's asking you this is that
at the end of this test, if you're deficient
in say, like, phosphorus, it'll recommend
how much of an organic phosphorous source you need to add
to bring it back to balance.
And that's also why it's asking you the square footage area.
So I just went over there and measured it
and it's a hundred, it's 10 by 10 feet,
so it's a hundred square feet.
And that will give you the exact amount of,
like, phosphorus, for example,
that you need to add per hundred square feet
to bring that garden back into essentially normal.
So after that,
what you could do is go to add test, and here
is where you would add that soil nutrient sample number.
That way when this test actually gets analyzed,
it's automatically going to be appended
to the large tomato bed
and your results will be ready to read right off the bat.
So, I'm gonna go ahead and register all these.
We'll drop it in the mail
and then, when we get the test back
we'll go over exactly what the results show.
The results are in from the soil test results.
So we're gonna dive right into it,
talk about what's measured, what's happening in my garden
and also just a quick reminder that
every time you harvest from your garden,
you are actually removing nutrients.
And that is why it's important
to keep an eye on your nutrients
and make sure that you're not deficient in something,
or maybe you have too much of something,
maybe there's a problem with your plants
that might be identified through this result.
So, what I'm going to do is open up the first test result,
which is the no dig bed and I'll talk about
all the different things that are measured
and then, after that we'll go into each separate test result
and what's going on in my garden.
So, right when you open it up
you get this nice little bar graph
that shows all the different things that are measured.
The first thing here is soil pH.
So in this case, the optimal range
that they list is 6.2 to 6.8,
but really anything that's kind of
between the six and seven is totally probably fine.
Now, the reason why soil pH is so important
is that at too low of soil pH,
so too acidic, things that are, like, soil pH of five,
or if it's too basic, like soil pH of eight,
you might lock out specific nutrients.
The next test result here is the organic matter content.
What is organic matter content?
That is everything that's feeding your soil food web.
So, things like your bacteria, your nematodes,
anything that's living in the soil
such as earthworms as well,
they all thrive on organic matter.
So, you want to be in that five to seven range.
You could probably go up to 10 without major issues.
But once you get above that,
you start having issues like fungal disease,
too much water retention,
and anything really below I'd say four
is not really a healthy soil.
Now, the next number up is the capacity to retain nutrients
or CEC, which stands for a cation exchange capacity.
That's another important one.
It's basically your soil's ability to retain nutrients
that your plants can then use.
Now practically, what does that mean?
It means if you have a low CEC
that you don't want to put a bunch of fertilizer in at once,
because that's just gonna wash right through.
There's nowhere in the soil for that to be retained.
So, if you have a sandy soil,
you're gonna wanna actually apply
smaller doses of fertilizer over time
instead of a lot up front,
which something like a clay soil can handle.
Moving down, we're going
into all the different sort of macro and micronutrients.
So, the reason why these are important
is because I believe there is 17 macro and micronutrients
that are essential for plant growth and health.
And they do everything
from allowing the plant to photosynthesize to growing.
So, they're very critical
that you have all those different elements present.
If you're missing one, it could lock out everything else.
So, that's why it's important to look at things like that.
Now, if I scroll down you'll see that
if there is something that is deficient,
in this case it's actually mentioning nitrogen,
which you'll notice isn't tested.
And the reason why it's not tested is because
nitrogen is very volatile in soil,
so it's actually very difficult
to get an accurate measurement.
Now, other than that there are no recommendations,
because overall
my soil is quite rich in everything it needs.
So, let's go ahead and look at another result,
which is the large tomato bed.
So this one, again, high across the board for everything.
Now, if I scroll down,
that they actually recommend the soil acidifier
and they tell me exactly how much I need to add
to bring my soil pH down to optimal levels.
So, I need to apply about seven pounds to that region
in order to bring that pH back down.
And I think I'll definitely do that,
because like I mentioned,
pH is probably the most important one to monitor,
because if it's not in that sweet spot
your plants are just going to struggle
a little bit more than they need to.
So, next up is the garlic and pepper bed.
So, okay, interesting.
The soil pH a little high again
and the organic matter is quite low.
That's not too surprising,
because I actually haven't really amended those beds much.
They had peppers growing in there
for something like eight months.
So, in that whole time period, I didn't add any compost.
I didn't really work the soil because I couldn't,
because there was something growing in it.
So in this case, what I'll probably do is apply a compost
and maybe fork it in a little bit
so I get deeper into the soil profile a little quicker.
And let's actually scroll down.
Everything else is perfectly good.
And let's see.
Yep. So they recommend the soil acidifier again.
So in this case, I need about three pounds
to apply to this area to bring it back down in line
to where it needs to be.
Other than that,
I'm going to add some compost and acidify the soil.
Now, the last one here is the south garden,
which is the garden right behind me.
But, overall soil pH is right in that optimal range.
Organic matter content is good.
CEC is about the same as everywhere else.
And again, same results as everywhere else.
My phosphorus, potassium are high,
calcium is a little bit low,
but everything else is pretty much good to go.
I'm very curious to kind of do this on a regular basis.
I think every fall makes sense because that's really
after you grow so many different things that are intensive,
like all those tomatoes are gonna soak up
all those nutrients.
So, it's a really good time to kind of take an assessment
of your soil and see maybe what's missing.
I'm also going to be very curious to see that
after I acidify the soil, whether my soil pH
actually came down to where I want it to be.
Overall, great information.
It's good to know that most of my nutrients are fine
and that I actually have too many.
And again, I'll put a link in the description for RX Soil.
If you use the code EPICGARDENING you'll get 10% off.
Up to you guys if you wanna do that soil test as well.
But, I'll see you guys in fall
when I do a follow up soil test.
(gentle music)