Karl's Garden Blog

Over at the Cheap Vegetable Gardener, they posted a great write up of What Nutrients Gardens Need a few days ago. Somewhat inspired by their post, I picked up a home soil testing kit from the Co-Op last time I was there buying seeds. It came with testing containers and enough supplies to conduct ten tests of each of the major items: Soil acidity, Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus.

I don’t want to foreshadow too much, but this got a bit interesting, so I’ve split the article into four parts. Today I’ll talk about the process. The next post will reveal the results of my raised bed. After that, I’ll post some quick reviews of the various OTHER things that I tested to see what the results were.

The kit's cover

The first thing I tested, of course, was the soil from my own garden. There are two processes for this kit — one for pH, the other for the three main elements that are important to the cycle of life that all plants follow.

For tools, they give you a very sophisticated set of containers, a bunch of gelatin capsules like the kind you get pills in, and a very scientific pipette.

Testing Containers

The first is a pH test (Potential Hydrogen), which reveals whether or not your soil is acidic or alkaline. This is one of the most basic requirements for plant growth — if your dirt is too acidic or too alkaline, you’ll burn the roots and/or stunt the growth of the plant. Most plants (and people) are happy with a neutral pH, but some plants are happiest with an acidic pH. The pH test was simple. Mix a sample of dirt of X size with some distilled water and the contents of a capsule, shake well, and let settle.

The other three tests call for a specific sampling and mixing process. The directions call for mixing one part soil with five parts distilled water, and then let the water settle until it’s clear. For soils with lots of clay content (that would be me they’re talking to), it’s recommended to let things settle for up to 24 hours.

I see murky things.

Ah, but this is interesting. After letting it settle overnight, it was still pretty murky. The directions said to let it settle almost to clear, but I figured I’d go ahead and run the tests because it had already been sitting for upwards of 24 hours.

I suppose it's a bit clearer...

And here’s the cliffhanger … to be continued — click through to Part 2.

Update: Unfortunately, the cliffhanger’s going to have to be prolonged until my MacBook Pro comes back from Applecare. It got shipped off yesterday, and I should have it back in my hands sometime next week. I hope. Sorry for the delay. Everything’s backed up, I just can’t access the photos in my Aperture library on the backup without another Mac.