Soil Testing

Whether you are new to farming altogether or you are leasing your farmland to a producer who is unfamiliar with the practice, becoming knowledgeable about the acts of soil testing and them applying recommended soil amendments based on soil test results provides tremendous advantages to the soil, plants, and your pocketbook.

- Hope Ellis-Ashburn

Soil Testing Defined

"A soil test is something that allows you to understand what the physical and nutritive properties of your soil are," says Cody Brown, district conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service in Jasper, Tennessee. "The soil is a medium for you to have life growing in and that life needs certain things."

Brown explains that to be best accommodated, different crops require different properties. "When you do a soil test, it lets you know how good that environment is for that plant that you're trying to grow," he says.

Use of a diverse blend of crops, grasses and cover crops creates a protective blanket that feeds and nurtures the soil.

Benefits to Plants

Measuring the importance of soil testing has much to do with the plants the producer is attempting to raise and what those plants are able to pull out of the soil. "If we're trying to grow a certain plant, it needs certain aspects to grown in," Brown says. You want to know what the plant needs to grow as well as the current nutrient level of the soil and how it can be improved to best support the plant you want to raise. To get the best results, you may want to use more than one type of soil test elaborating that there are many aspects to soil and that no one soil tests covers every one of them.

Different soil tests provide users with different information. "If you are looking at the physical properties of soil, then you're going to be in the soil texture triangle," he says. "This is sand, silt and clay."