UMASS Soil Testing
If you take gardening seriously, then you know it all starts with soil health. But you can’t just look down and analyze it. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst offers cheap soil tests that will provide you with a comprehensive rundown of what your soil contains and what it needs.
I first had the soil test done back in 2001, and it showed low phosphorous, and very low levels of heavy metals. It gave specific instructions for adding nitrogen, phosphorous and limestone. For $9 they perform a standard soil test resulting in the following information: pH level, buffer pH, extractable nutrients (P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, B), extractable heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Ni, Cr), and extractable aluminum, cation exchange capacity, percent base saturation. For $13 you get everything in the standard soil test and the amount of organic matter in your soil.
One of the most vital tests is the extractable heavy metals. Anyone planning to grow food near an old house that may have been painted with lead-based paints should perform this test to make sure you’re not growing your organic veggies in poisoned soil, which pretty much defeats the purpose.
The soil test also provides specific fertilization recommendations, based on what you're growing. This helps you customize your fertilizing practices, by letting you know what you need to add to make your soils more fertile. More importantly, you can use that soil test to cut back on the stuff your soil doesn’t need.
These are some of the cheapest soil tests available anywhere, and they provide immensely useful information. I first heard about them during my Master Gardener training a couple of decades ago. My only caveat is that the test is only as good as the sample provided. Make sure you follow their directions carefully.
I'm planning to redo the soil test, since I had raised beds added recently. The raised beds were filled with topsoil from a local company that composts yard and food waste. Now that I have good raised beds and drip irrigation, I'm gardening on a much larger scale and need better information. I took half a dozen large plastic sacks full of lettuce and spinach to the local food bank last year, and am hoping I'll be able to do that again next year.
Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Laboratory
Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst, Dept. of Plant and Soil Sciences
Favorite (15)
Ben
Most any land grant university will do this for a similar fee (or cheaper -- sometimes free). You don't need to send your soil to Massachusetts.
The best advice would be to contact your local agricultural extension office and/or agent. Every county should have one. They can give you the right advice about where and how to get your soil tested.
I hate to join the club -- but how is this a "Cool Tool" ???
Edward Bryant
Like most suburban properties, my yard has mixed soils, some having been introduced during construction in order to achieve the final grade. I have been agonizing over where to take the two soil samples which I could afford. Now I can afford ten samples for the same price!
Ben - if University of Washington or Washington State University have free soil testing, I have been unable to find it. I am going to call the cooperative extension when they open, but my recollection from past visits is that they only recommend outside testing at my cost.
As to "cool"; anyone who knows me knows I am not fit to judge anything with regards to coolness, but I will say I was very happy to see Amy's Cool Tool this morning.
Sherard
Ever since the Bruce Sterling debacle, too many readers of this blog have felt it acceptable to question whether or not a particular submission properly rates as a “cool tool.” Can that please end. CT has an editor and he’s doing a great job of providing a broad spectrum of tools. Just because a particular item is not cool to you doesn’t mean that it’s not helpful to someone else. Three-quarters of the postings here are not cool to me but I always enjoy reading them (and the comments). For me, CT submissions provide valuable insights into the lives of innovative, thoughtful people.
KimJSCP
Well - I guess if you are not into gardening, then it is not a cool tool, but to us gardeners, it is a very cool tool and I really appreciate its posting. I was also a master gardener through 2 different land grant universities and this is by far the most comprehensive test I have ever heard of for even close to this price and I get most of my info straight from 3 county extension agents. In fact, I will be forwarding this information to them and we are on the west coast.
Ben - if you have a better source for and actual soil test, then why don't you share that information, otherwise your post really doesn't offer much.
M. Lin
About CoolTools
"Tools are defined broadly as anything that can be useful. This includes hand tools, machines, books, software, gadgets, websites, maps, and even ideas."
Looks like this could be useful for any gardener.
S. Wylde
I agree this ‘tool’ does meet the criteria, as followed generally, of a Cool Tool. I also tend to forget that a Cool Tool can be a resource or website.
For USA residents only: I would also, as Ben suggests above, add your local USDA [agricultural] Cooperative Extension System Offices (www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/). These tend to be at the county level, but some have larger territories.
“The Cooperative Extension System is a nationwide, non-credit educational network. Each U.S. state and territory has a state office at its land-grant university and a network of local or regional offices. These offices are staffed by one or more experts who provide useful, practical, and research-based information to agricultural producers, small business owners, youth, consumers, and others in rural areas and communities of all sizes.”
The above gives you a description of what your local office/agent will do. Some examples of how I have used my local agent: (1) as a source for farmers close to me that direct sell non-processed (non-pasteurized) honey and suckling pigs; (2) soil testing – they gave me contact information at a local public university; (3) information for a presentation my daughter was doing on the new food pyramid; & (4) for a suggested list of plants that area hardy and cold resistant for my local area. The services are free, knowledgeable, and the offices are, in my experience, very willing to help you with anything food and/or plant related.
Gari
In North Carolina the state agricultural extension will provide this service for free. You just fill up a box with dirt, drop it off at the office with some information about what you want to plant, and about six weeks later you get a letter with all the details Amy mentioned above about your soil, including recommendations for what to add before planting. You should download their explanation file as well. It describes what each of the factors tested for really means. That helps, because if you aren't a chemist you won't be able to make much sense of the analysis details. I still don't quite understand what cation exchange capacity is.
Amy Thomson
As the contributor of this cool tool, I wanted provide a non-obvious resource to help you find out what your soil contains. When I was a King County Master gardener, this was the place they recommended for us to use. It was cheaper than the soil testing in Corvallis, Oregon. If you know a place that does this as comprehensively and cheaply in your area, then please share it with us.
Your local cooperative extension agency is definitely one of those Cool Tools that generally passes under the radar. It's not the high-tech matte black shiny kind of cool. It's the gritty, dirt under your fingernails, what-works-locally kind of cool. Both kids of tools are valid, depending on what you need to do. Local extension agencies are often invisible, but many of them sponsor the Master Gardener programs, which train local gardeners to help other, less-experienced gardeners. Extension agencies provide huge amounts of information on both good, local food production, and better, more environmentally sound landscape gardening. Extension agencies are highly variable. Some are better at encouraging organic gardening than others. But there's almost always some information you can use, even if it's just what kind of tomato varieties do well in your area.
Regarding cation exchange capacity. If you think of your soil as a giant sponge holding water and nutrients, then the cations are the holes in the sponge that contain nutrients. The higher your cation exchange capacity, the more nutrients a soil can hold. Clay soils and soils rich in humus and organic matter have high cation exchange capacity. Beach sand would have a very low cation exchange capacity.
Ben
Like Gari already said, NC does it for free through county agents and the NCDA. The turnaround time is 5-7 days. You can pick up sample boxes at extension offices and some towns have them available at various city offices. The report includes everything noted in the original article except heavy metals and aluminum -- I went to grad school at NCSU and have looked at several of them, so I know :)
http://www.agr.state.nc.us/AGRONOMI/sthome.htm
In Georgia (where I live now), you can get a basic soil test done through your extension agent for $8 or you can order a kit on your own for $15. This covers only the primary macro and micronutrients plus pH and liming recommendations. Additional tests (organic matter, other elements) incur additional fees -- contact an extension agent for the current fee schedule.
http://aesl.ces.uga.edu/
Davey
I've been looking for affordable soil testing for years. Thanks, Amy, for solving one of those maddening problems that seemed to have no good answer. For me, this might be the coolest tool of all.
Contrary to Ben, the university where I live (Illinois) doesn't do s*** about soil testing -- at least not if you're not agribiz. The best you get out of them is a list of commercial testing services that charge 10x or more the UM fee -- for a less comprehensive test. Some other nearby states will do testing free or cheap, but only for state/county residents. And Ben, nice for you about Georgia and all, but most of us probably don't live there, so maybe next time you could withhold bashing ideas that are not cool within your own little personal environment.
Amy Thomson
I would hate to see this disagreement about what constitutes a cool tool turn toxic. One of the things I love about this blog is that they define the concept of a tool so broadly. There's plenty of things that I see posted that are not personally useful to me at the moment. But even the ones that aren't "Cool" by my own parameters often expand my knowledge of what's possible. And I know that even if today's tool isn't useful to me, the next one may well revolutionize my life.
Please be more gentle with your words. There are better things to do with your time than fight. Especially when there are so many cool tools to play with!
Tim Jones
I guess even this Cool Tool community is not above the fray. Davey, When I first read this cool tool I agreed with Ben. In my home state of AR we are used to having a great, supportive and funded Coop that does free soil testing. After learning some states are less fortunate then we are I believe this cool tool might be good for someone to ship their dirt across the country to get it tested on the cheap. Good luck with that.
But,
I think Cooperative Extension Service's should be the real Cool Tool here. I researched the UMassAmherst Outreach UMass Extension (http://www.umassextension.org/index.php/home) and find it to be a very good provider to the public for agri information as most university Agri extension services are. (Exception Illinois) In regard to their soil testing it is very comprehensive indeed, and I suspect if you live in Mass you would send your soil there for testing and pay the small fee. But I would recommend people not living in Mass to locate and use their state Cooperative Extension Service, since they should better know the states soil make up and be better experienced in guiding you on how to improve your soil in your area. They should also be able to help you in many other ways as well.
Where I live, UofA (Arkansas) Cooperative Extension Service just happens to offer their soil test for free and it is a comparable test to the one in Mass.
http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/pdf/FSA-2118.pdf
Personally, (we can give our opinion here right?) I think a cool tool would be a LaMotte Soil Test Kit -- Pro found here: http://www.gemplers.com/product/RLMC/LaMotte-Soil-Test-Kit-Professional
I have never used one and it is expensive but I think it could be a "Cool Tool" if it had a strong recommendation from the community. But I'm a science nerd. Anyone ever try the LaMotte soil test kit or another brand you like?
Andrew Pollack
I agree - this is a cool tool. I don't garden, but I do build the raised beds and do the turning and haul the bags of composted manure.
To me, this is a cheap, reliable, and quantifiable solution to the mystery of what to put in the soil. It meets all the requirements of a cool tool.
thom
Hey Kevin Kelly,
Thanks for removing my comment. You leave Cool Tool bashers that do not add any useful info but you remove my comment about organic gardening?
Kevin Kelly
@Thom: Maybe you can correct me. It looked as if that was not your comment but a cut and past job of a long excerpt from another website. A link will do. If you want to post a long comment of your own, that would be welcomed.
Ryan
As a Farmer and UMass grad I'm glad to see this info is being put out there. I can verify that the Umass program is very helpful (check out the New England Vegetable Management Guide posted free on their website for tips on growing over 40 different crops), but will agree that you are likely to find more convenient and just as "cool" services/tools from other states if you don't live anywhere near Massachusetts. Also, I would like add as a side note that I recently spent about an hour researching various philosophies and religions on the web and after reading comments regarding those articles it's very refreshing to see more articulate and reasonable comments that haven't escalated to narrow-minded insults.
Ben
The University of Minnesota offers testing as well, if you're willing to mail the soil.
http://soiltest.cfans.umn.edu/
That said, I agree with Tim that the real "Cool Tool" that's being overlooked here is the extension service. Look up your local extension service. Their agents are there to answer your questions for free and their websites often have great flyers, newsletters and other timely information.
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/