When you grow anything on your livestock pasture, crop field or even your home’s lawn, the only way to know what nutrients the soil requires to maintain a healthy soil (and thereby healthy plants) is to get a soil sample done every 3-5 years.
“The most important thing about soil sampling is getting a good sample from your field,” said Brie Menjoulet, a Hickory County Missouri Agronomy Specialist with the University of Missouri Extension Service.
Neal Mays completely agreed that getting a good, diverse sample, is the key to success. Mays is a Benton County Arkansas Extension Agent of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
He said, “The first thing to do is visually size up the area that’s being tested… whether crop field, pasture or lawn. If the whole area is uniform, you treat it as a single testing area. If there are irregularities such as a low or high spot you would sample that section separately. Or, for example, if one area has received something different, like chicken litter on it a lot, through the years, you’d want to sample that all separately.” Both Mays and Menjoulet encourage that the more samples you take, the better.
If you have a few different areas with different soil (hills, valleys, extra fertilizing through the years from chickens, etc.) then you will conduct the following collection for each of the different areas. Do not mix those areas together or the sample will not be representative of the individual areas, but rather an average of the entire field or pasture.
In other words, if areas are significantly different, they will each require a different sample and will each be given separate recommendation for fertilizer or lime.
4 Easy Steps for Sample Collection
1. Collect the sample, scrape away any vegetation to the soil surface.
2. Then with a shovel or a probe, take a 4-inch deep sample (in a field or pasture or lawn) or 6-inch deep in a garden. Collect samples in a zig zag pattern across the entire area until it’s pretty well representative of the entire area.
3. Mix all of these samples in a bucket to mix the different samples really well.
4. Once the soil has dried out, take about 2-3 cups of soil to your local extension office and they will help you send your soil sampling off for testing.
It’s recommended that each sample be dug 4-6 inches, but be consistent in depth across the area.
There is small fee for testing soil in the state of Missouri. Menjoulet recommended calling ahead to make an appointment. Once you get it to the Extension office you will usually have the results in two weeks or less. There’s also the option to have them emailed back to you.
When you take your sample to the Extension Office, both Menjoulet and Mays agree that it’s best to sit and visit with the Extension agent to determine what you are growing on the tested area because the lab will take this into consideration when recommending fertilizer or lime.
Mays said, “Once you get the report back it will have a host of different numbers. Those numbers tell you the concentration of nutrients in your tested area.”
Once you know what is recommended in the tested area for fertilizer and lime and you apply that to your field, pasture, lawn or garden, then your plants will grow more vigorously and successfully. This also prevents you from over fertilizing or applying unnecessary lime to an area, which prevents excess runoff into waterways and saves the producer or homeowner money in the long run.
