When we tested our soil last winter, my analysis was pretty simple.  I just wanted to make sure there weren't problematic heavy metals in the soil and that all of the useful nutrients were available in sufficient amounts.  Everything looked okay, so I didn't make any special changes after viewing my results.

Now that I'm reading Steve Solomon's excellent book The Intelligent Gardener, though, I'm ready to move to a second tier of soil analysis.  I started considering the ratios of soil nutrients last winter, but hadn't read enough on the topic to know exactly what I was looking for and how important slight variations from optimal percentages were.  Solomon's book has sold me on the idea that these ratios are important (more on that when I write a lunchtime series about The Intelligent Gardener), and that adding amendments like gypsum to get those ratios back on track can produce huge changes in soil characteristics.

The only trouble is that the information in Solomon's book only works if you use data from a Mehlich 3 soil analysis.  Any kind of soil test will give you useful results, but you can't necessarily compare results between different types of tests, and UMass Amherst, who tested my soil last year, uses a modified Morgan extractant.

Which is all a long way of explaining why I'm biting the bullet and testing again, this time using Logan Labs, which is explicitly recommended by Solomon.  If you want to follow along, I recommend you learn about the basics of soil testing in Weekend Homesteader: January, then get your soil samples in the mail now.  I'll be analyzing my results here in early January (or whenever I finish digesting Solomon's book), and will be glad to help you do the same.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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