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Soil Testing
117 Plays2 years ago
If you want to grow healthy plants, you need to know what's in your soil. That's why taking a soil test is one of the best things you can do for your garden and fields. In this episode, we'll discuss how to take a soil test sample and submit it through your local Extension office for analysis. You'll learn what kind of information you'll get from the test results, and how to use it to improve your soil and your plants.
- Taking Soil Test Samples
- Taking Soil Samples for Horticulture Crops
- Soil Testing Through the University of Kentucky Extension Service
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Horticulture Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Horticulture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
September Morning Conversations
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Are you excited? How's everybody feeling today? Howdy. Are you enjoying these cool mornings? We're recording things, you know, end of September, so. Every morning with you guys is cool. Oh,
The Great Chili Debate
00:00:29
Speaker
well. It's more of a mindset for me. I'm talking physically. I was out in the field this morning and my hands were like a little chilly while I was harvesting. It's chilly weather.
00:00:40
Speaker
Yes, a little chili. Chili, what kind of, are you a white chili fan? Are you a red chili? Do you put noodles in there? Okay, there's only one color for chili. It is not soup, Alexa. Soup can be white if it wants to be. Chili should be reddish to dark reddish. Okay. Yeah. Do you put noodles in your chili? That seems like some kind of Ohio thing. I put it over my noodles because it's real thick, my chili is robust, and sometimes I can use it as a sauce.
Chili as an Economic Meal
00:01:10
Speaker
I think you can put it over rice or a hot dog. Yeah. Rice. Never put a chili over rice. Chili noodles in your chili is blasphemy where I'm from. I do not do noodles in my chili, no. I thought you just said you put it over it. No, I will put it over like make spaghetti and actually use chili instead of spaghetti. No, that's spaghetti. Spaghetti into chili. Yeah.
00:01:35
Speaker
But as far as, uh, yeah, mom would do that sometimes to stretch it. Cause there's a lot of kids and lots of farm people to feed for lunches. Like, you know, when we were working. So that was when you did that, it was an economic decision to stretch the chili. See my family just put more beans in it. Like you need to stretch it further. You just put more beans. Yeah. I like the kidney beans. I have different kinds of beans in the show. I'm team dark red chili. I'm team red chili. How you feel about chili?
Childhood Food Memories
00:02:06
Speaker
Are you a chili boy? Yeah, I would say so. That was one of the things that my dad always, like a very seminal menu item at our house that my dad always made. I mean, and it was a traditional kind of red chili with beef and beans and tomato based and all that.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of feel like chili unto itself is that. And like there are other variations that are comparable, like the white chili, which I really enjoy, but it doesn't really feel like it's like saying, would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? But instead it has ham and cheese on it. It's like,
00:02:44
Speaker
I mean, those are both enjoyable, but those are just a type of jelly. Yeah. And they say that cheese is the peanut butter of dairy. I'm going to have to unpack that. I can see the comparison there. Yeah, just spray it all over.
Unusual Childhood Snacks
00:03:10
Speaker
Did you all grow up with eating a peanut butter sandwich with your children? Yes. And I mixed in a little bit of syrup with the peanut butter and had peanut butter and syrup sandwiches. That lady was just pure hatred at that point.
00:03:27
Speaker
Like, not just table syrup, whatever kind of syrup. Bob was actually preferred. Mrs. Buttersworth. That was a good one. Yeah, mixed that with peanut butter. Sorghum was a favorite. Sorghum and peanut butter. Yeah. No, I am. I was Midwestern enough to put spaghetti in my chili, but not not Midwestern enough to do the.
00:03:47
Speaker
Peanut butter. I always thought of that as like an Illinois, Indiana thing. Ohio thing. But Ray is, he's a cosmopolitan man. He's a Kentucky boy. I mean, I put chili on lots of different things because I love him so much.
00:04:04
Speaker
I mean, I'll top dress my soil with it. My northern Appalachia family are purists in the chilly world. Okay, so it's beans. It's maybe a meat. Okay, maybe. Not even. More beans. More meat, please. Because you might not have the meat because you pull, so you put more beans in it. And tomatoes. Tomato base. Tomatoes of all kinds. I've used a lot of cumin now. I don't want to muddy the water.
00:04:31
Speaker
What's that? Yes, we need more of that, Alexis. I like that. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Did it come out? Comes out sometimes. Human and brown sugar goes in there. If we did sandwiches with something that was like a tomato, like chili or tomato soup, it was always a grilled cheese. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not PB&J, it's just peanut butter.
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's just bread. Yeah. Or crackers. Some people do like peanut butter. My parents did like buttered crackers, saltines with like a little. That's actually.
00:05:06
Speaker
Funny you say that because I was listening to a different podcast and they're in Massachusetts and she was saying how everyone thought she was weird because she liked butter on her saltines and I was like, that's normal. Like why would that be weird?
00:05:24
Speaker
I have club crackers just sitting here at my desk when I'm bored. When I was young, my dad would make these things, I don't know where, I guess his mom or something, maybe a vestige of the strange recombination culinary culture of the 60s where you would take different
00:05:46
Speaker
Put them in a Jell-O mold? Yeah, exactly. Like Jell-O mold, that kind of thing. It was a saltine, a little dab of mayonnaise, a quarter of a Kraft single or equivalent on there, and then a slice or two of dill pickle on top of that. Okay. Oh, interesting. It is... Yeah, a little crunch. You got crunch, you got tang, you got the sweetness of the mayo. I was mad about that. Oh, man. Is it strange? It looks strange.
00:06:15
Speaker
I'm here for it. But I, I would eat, I would eat some right now. Sometimes I just like, I'll go in the fridge and I just like open a craft single and I just eat it, like sitting in the living room. That's a regular occurrence. There was string cheese before there was string cheese was the string. Well, the funny thing is we also have string cheese, but sometimes you just want to unwrap a slice of cheese. I knew I had a problem when my dog became accustomed to me opening cheese and she would come running. Little Donna would come running because she would hear the cheese pack being opened.
00:06:44
Speaker
I hear the Instagram cheese tax song. No, what is it? The cheese tax. The cheese tax. Is that when you tip the bag out? No, the dog requires a cheese tax. Joy every eat Vienna sausages and times pronounced by any sausages. I would eat them in the car so we didn't take the evidence home.
00:07:11
Speaker
Like we pop the can we stash the truck to keep them warm. We had a special spot on the solar solar power. And then when we needed to cook the spam, we put it on the manifold of the old farm trucks. We had a special spot on the manifold that would heat the spam. So we were pretty thrifty. Yeah, we were just energy cycling. Yeah, we would cut those biennese in half and put
00:07:41
Speaker
pretzel sticks in them as a little edible handle. And then when you feel fancy, you get the barbecue. Oh, look at you guys. I'm a pretzel as a handle. I mean, that was a big city. Big city. Next party, everybody bring that weird thing that you grew up eating. That should be a theme. I want to hear more about it. I want to hear more about it. I love regional eating. I say that because I don't really throw parties, but Brett does, so I'm trying to let him know. Noodle. Amazing food. Amazing food.
00:08:08
Speaker
All noodles, no chili. Actually, buttered noodles are not the worst. Buttered noodles with some salt, the buttered saltines cracked up. Add a little bit of garlic and you got Alfredo, baby. You got a sauce going. I'm entirely too excited about, how do we get here? I don't know.
00:08:32
Speaker
Chili right chili has many different particles in it right we've got so many particles particles very similar to what you might have in it right lots of different nutrients lots of different structures that make up a beautiful compound in your pot and around here a lot of it is a brownish red.
00:08:53
Speaker
I mean, basically walk on chili every day.
Soil Testing Essentials
00:08:56
Speaker
So what we are talking about today is soil testing. We're going to talk about when to do it, how to do it, as well as kind of how to interpret those results. And so, uh, we know we've get some, some calls, some questions about that, and it can be a little bit confusing. So we're here to help you out with that. So that's where we're going with chili.
00:09:17
Speaker
nine minutes into the episode. Can you tie in Vienna sausages for us? The smoothest of segments. I guess that little handle is sort of like a soil probe, which is one of the tools that we might use to test soil. We're really reaching out there and I love every moment of this.
00:09:38
Speaker
So, soil testing, right? We're talking about it here in the fall because in Kentucky at least, it's usually the best time to do soil testing. Can anybody tell me why? Because the lab has time.
00:09:53
Speaker
Sorry, Brett, Brett was raising his hand. We don't have video. I was just playing the, playing the, the eager school student. Yes. That's what's called student school child. Yeah. The, so I think of two reasons. One is Ray said, you know, everybody's really excited to get their soil tested in the spring, which means lots of people send it in. There can be backups in the lab. But the other reason is if you're,
00:10:19
Speaker
And if you're at all concerned about or trying to make any adjustments to your pH, there might be some things that you might have to intervene on at this point versus later. And you can also be a little more prepared going into spring. Those would be my guesses for why, but am I missing something?
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, no pH also like nutrients and depending on what kind of fertilizer you're using, so sometimes our more organic fertilizers or our manures, things like that need a lot more time to break down. And so putting them on in the fall makes them more available in the spring when the plants can actually use them. So fall is by far the best time. That's kind of like our discussion of cover crops a few weeks ago with giving them time to break down.
00:11:01
Speaker
And there's another really important reason for those of you guys that have taken soil samples before and tried to use a soil probe in summer. They're very hard to get to go into the ground. You will say lots of interesting words, not all of them good, as you're trying to take a soil test. So part of it is hopefully in the fall of the year,
00:11:22
Speaker
the soil is more agreeable to being tested as far as getting actual soil probe in the ground. If you are using a soil probe, if you're a home gardener, you may be using a trowel, but I tell people not to overlook that fact that in the fall of the year, the temperatures are typically milder. There's more moisture in the soil typically, and that makes it easier to actually pull the soil samples. So that's another reason that I like to take soil samples at a certain time of the year.
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I would just add that whenever you do take them, it's good. You should, those comparisons from year to year, it's better if they're taken at the same time of the year. Yes. Yeah. So September sometime in September or, you know, even later, October is fine. As long as you've got some time to get out there and get some nutrients down and a way to protect it either through tilling it in or.
00:12:16
Speaker
you know, cover cropping or whatever that is to keep those nutrients from washing away. It's going to be... You know, commercially, you know, if you're working with larger areas, I'm just under the assumption that you may be using a bulk lime.
00:12:31
Speaker
because we break lime down into either bag lime, which neutralizes very quickly, or just agriculture grade lime, which breaks down very slowly. It takes months and months and months to break down and neutralize. So yeah, that's another great reason to give yourself a little bit more lead time when taking a soil sample. If you do need to apply lime and it's agriculture grade lime, just keep it. Why would you want to apply lime, right?
00:12:55
Speaker
If your pH is off, if you have low pH, and that would be indicated on the soil sample. And as we get into talking more about the actual results and the comments that we make as agents, that's something that we always note on there if lime is needed. If it is needed, not always needed, but if it is needed, that'll be a comment on there and how much and which quality.
00:13:16
Speaker
And if you're a medium-sized producer, I don't know that I personally have to always ask, will you be using bag lime or agriculture
Role of Extension Agents in Soil Testing
00:13:24
Speaker
bulk lime? Because it does make a huge difference on the expected period that that's going to neutralize the soil. Out of curiosity, I mean, so I work on campus and don't have to, this isn't part of something that I do regularly, is providing interpretation. So just out of curiosity, in y'all's counties, like
00:13:42
Speaker
about how many kind of soil tests are you evaluating or helping out with a year? Or, yeah, I guess a year or a month, I mean, just roughly. Our office does a few hundred. And I'm trying to reverse that in my head because in our office, you know, like many offices, there's an agriculture agent and then a horticulture agent.
00:14:04
Speaker
For me myself, uh, how do, I don't know, a few hundred. Yeah. I do personally, I do about 300 and then my ag agent probably does about that many as well. So I, and for those of you who are like, wait, what to Ray and I horticulture. So we're going to cover home lawns, home gardens, and commercial horticulture production where our agriculture agents are going to cover pastures and tobacco, corn, soybean, that kind of stuff.
00:14:30
Speaker
What does an extension agent quote, doing the soil test or handling the soil test mean? Like what do you all do? Don't you just press forward? Yes, that is exactly what we do. So when you take a soil test in the state of Kentucky, you know, we have 120 counties, we have 120 extension offices, but we, we used to have two labs. We only have one lab now.
00:14:54
Speaker
But the second one is being built again. So you will take a soil sample into your extension office. And I know they do this in all states, but how close your extension office is, I'm not sure. But you'll take this into your local extension offices. They'll ask you a couple of questions. Hey, what are you growing here? How big of an area? Those types of things. That all goes into a system. And then that gets sent off to University of Kentucky Soil Lab.
00:15:23
Speaker
where they run a bunch of tests. And then those results get sent to our desks. And so I personally look at every single soil test that is for horticulture that comes through this county.
00:15:35
Speaker
and I give a recommendation and interpret those results for you as a homeowner. For me personally, I'm going to give it down to 100 square feet or even smaller sometimes depending on what you're growing. If you've got one azalea, I'm going to help you with one azalea. If you've got five acres of watermelon, I'm going to help you with five acres of watermelon.
00:15:58
Speaker
And so we scale those and then also, you know, we may ask you, are you doing organic production? And I'm going to give you recommendations for organic fertilizers versus conventional. And so we ask all these questions and then we say exactly, put down exactly this at this time, you know, till in or broadcast, whatever.
00:16:19
Speaker
bada-boom bada-bing bada-bing. Blammo. Blammo. Boom. Like a drop. And then we send that to you. Uh, so it does take some time. So we usually say a safe bed, even in the fall.
00:16:35
Speaker
We say two weeks to get it back and then I'm going to look at it within the week. I get it hopefully and I am because I can't stand the seeing them on my desktop not completed. So we're going to get that done. So you're looking at, you know, give yourself a month to be able to do that, which is why doing it in the fall is great because in the springtime everybody's rushing and it can take a month to get that back.
00:16:56
Speaker
Right. I know that there are options people can get on their tests to do additional things. If they select many options, does it take it longer for you to get it back to them or is it kind of about the same? It depends on like what their goals are. If they're just wanting to know like, hey, if I plant something here, am I going to get lead poisoning? Like that's a pretty easy like yay nay. So the soil tests that we run here and that most labs run is going to be the reports going to show fossil amounts of phosphorus, potassium,
00:17:25
Speaker
calcium, magnesium, zinc, pH in your buffer, pH, as well as your CEC. And those are going to be, and they're going to give you a nitrogen recommendation. And that's the default basic test. Those are the basic tests. Yep. Yep. So that's the standard. The big nutrients you need. Yeah. Those are your, your, your max guy, but you can have optional tests. So organic matter, a boron. So if you're growing root vegetables or cruciferous vegetables, boron is often a really important micronutrient.
00:17:53
Speaker
There's other micronutrients, you know, copper, iron, manganese, um, soluble salts. So if you're growing in a high tunnel where you're not getting a lot of rainfall or something, or you're, you've got greenhouse plants, soluble salts are going to be really important. Uh, you can also do heavy metals. So remember I said, like, am I going to die? If I plant my tomatoes here and eat them, we can run a heavy metals test, but we can even do soil texture, which is cool. So it's not chemical. If you just want to know the level of sand, silt and clay.
00:18:22
Speaker
that you have in your soil or in a particular area, we can do that as well. That's always a cool thing to add on. There's a couple more as well, but those are the big ones that we see people needing. The decision about which tests to run and all that, what you're growing there, those questions, that's happening on the front end before when you're filling out the sheet or that you are filling it out for the person.
Collecting Soil Samples
00:18:49
Speaker
the recommendations will just come to you in your email and, and, and, or be mailed to you, um, on the back end, right? That's the. Yeah. We're going to ask you a bunch of stuff upfront when you bring that soil in and what you tell us is going to inform how I give you a recommendation. So like be honest, like it's not, it doesn't hurt my feelings, uh, at all, but be honest about it so that I can tell you, and you're not going to waste time and money on something if you don't need it.
00:19:16
Speaker
I'm embarrassed to say this, but we're actually going to be growing two azaleas before we get to the point of like, you know, them bringing the soil into us. There's a lot of work. Preferably, if it's someone that's completely new to taking soil samples, I know that I spend some time because I think it's the best time spent to get a good sample.
00:19:42
Speaker
a good representative sample of the section that they're wishing to test. It may be 30 acres. It may be 300 square feet. And these are all things that we need to know up front. Not only that, but we need, you know, as I'm talking to people, if they're brand new, I'm like, well, what's, do you know any of the history on the, on the, the
00:20:03
Speaker
section that you're going to be soil testing. Do you know anything about that? I need to know all of that and not only that, but what's the crop that you're wanting to put in because that's going to affect the depth that you're taking that soil sample at. I mean, if it's turf, you're taking it between a half an inch and two inches for turf.
00:20:22
Speaker
But if it's something like, you know, other root crops, maybe six to eight inches, like vegetable crops, typically six to eight inches on tilled soil. So all of that makes a big difference. And the time that I spend working with homeowners and commercial producers, mostly homeowners that have never taken soil samples, that's really great time spent because that makes sure
00:20:42
Speaker
that they bring me a really good sample that represents the area that they're testing. And then it all starts with that for me. Getting great results is based on getting a great sample. So what do your pro tips look like?
00:20:57
Speaker
It's not much of a stretch if I'm a noob that comes into your office and says, hey, Ray, I'm trying to grow a 50 foot by 50 foot garden this year. It's gonna be some cut flowers, a few vegetables. I need to know what that soil do. How would you respond to me? Or like, how would you walk me through that?
00:21:24
Speaker
start with usually, you know, trying to visualize what kind of space which you, you know, have already laid that out. It's 50 by 50 feet or just whatever. And I'll ask them, is it fairly uniform? Because even there can be, believe it or not, variability even within small areas. So I really try to get at that uniformity. And you mentioned two different crops there, which is going to be two separate recommendations that you're going to get back because under our new soil testing programs here in the state that most of us are using,
00:21:51
Speaker
One recommendation will come back for home vegetable gardens. And is it true, Alexis, that my alternate recommendation will come back for like the flowers? I will not treat those the same, even though it is the same soil that I'm sending to the lab. We do that on our end.
00:22:08
Speaker
But how deep, Alexis, he mentioned like the flowers, how deep would you go on those? Is that six to eight inches on the average? If you're growing like an annual flower, like, in your scenario, Brett, six to eight inches, you're pulling the soil sample down. Now, then I begin in my particular office, we have soil probes that.
00:22:28
Speaker
facilitates taking a soil sample. You take a great sample with those. You don't need those. You can take a really good sample with a garden trowel as long as you can get down to that six to eight inch depth. You'll loan out those probes? Yeah, we loan those out. There's a deposit. Now, it's important to note that not all offices have those. You just need to call and communicate with your local... A shovel works just as good.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, shovel works great. And I encourage people to use a clean plastic bucket, specifically plastic, not metal, not tin, not rubber, because all of those have zinc in them. Believe it or not, rubber has zinc in it. It will absolutely contaminate the sample and mess up your macros on zinc, rubber will. So no metal, no rubber, good, clean, just plastic bucket. That's key. And then we talk about sampling patterns, doing like an imaginary tic-tac-toe pattern in your head.
00:23:20
Speaker
Going around, pulling individual cores. If you're using a soil probe, you'll get a core. It's like a hollow tube and then you'll get this core soil at whatever depth. You can accomplish that once again with a trowel. Pulling cores from that invisible grid in your head from all around the area that you're sampling. You're putting that into your clean plastic bucket and mixing that up.
00:23:44
Speaker
And then bringing that sample in and of that we need water Lexus about a pint of soil. Yeah, I usually tell people two cups is usually enough. Yeah, but more is fine. Yeah, give them the bag to take home when they come in some cases. Yeah, they've come in and we're working with them.
00:24:01
Speaker
because that gives them a target to shoot for. And so many times, I don't know if Alexis, you've had this, but folks that have not taken samples before, they'll come in and they'll just grab some bags at the front office and they'll come back and I will see that shovel slice. One shovel slice of soil in the bag. And that's what you don't want to do. You want to take a composite sample made up of many little individual samples from that area, blend it up, and then from that blended sample. Get an average.
00:24:29
Speaker
Yes, get an average. And those samples, and they said, well, can you just go ahead and take this one shovel full? And I'm like, well, it's not really going to give results, or it's going to give misleading results, and you're going to apply nutrients that may not be needed, or you're not going to apply nutrients that are needed. So that's so simple to me starts, everything starts with getting that good composite sample at the proper depth.
00:24:52
Speaker
To be clear, and I know this sounds silly to say, but I feel like I have to say, when we say that six to eight inch depth, we're not talking about the soil from just six inches. We're not saying go six inches down and only take that. We're talking about that top from the sod or the top of the soil down six to eight inches, that full spectrum.
00:25:13
Speaker
Try not to get a lot of organic matter in there or scruff. Try not to get like sticks and little debris. Yeah, don't bring us in your grass. That's not helpful. Before you bust it up, before you grind it up or mix it up with your hands, your bucket will be full of little, ideally little six to eight inch long plugs of soil if you're using a soil probe or
00:25:36
Speaker
You know cross-sections of a shovel slice if you're doing it that method yeah, it's a little a little plug of my job before this I pulled Samples so the little plugs that sometimes are in my nightmares They're in my dreams when I close my eyes, it's all I see
00:25:59
Speaker
Any other basic tips on that annual soil test approach?
Managing Soil Tests for Various Plants
00:26:04
Speaker
I always tell, Ray hit on this, I always tell people if they have garden in that area or
00:26:11
Speaker
They, it's something noticeably different, like whether or not maybe it holds water a little bit longer. You always notice that water puddles in that area or when you plant tomatoes there, they're never as good or they're better. Whatever it is, maybe it even gets more shade. Like for home lawn people, like I'm like, take your shade samples separately. Take that sample. They're like radically different.
00:26:32
Speaker
Right. If the weeds there anything that you don't have to know what the answer is, you just will inherently know something is different. Yeah. So you don't, yeah, you don't need to be an expert. So if you know that area is different, take that sample separately and then you can name that sample whatever you want. And you, as long as you know where it's from and we'll, we'll run that sample separately.
00:26:55
Speaker
Ray was talking about, you know, there's a lot of different ways to bring in a sample and we can put a lot of different crops on there now. So we have, we can just do general vegetable garden and that's what we'll do for people who they're going to grow a little bit of everything. They're not quite sure maybe where they're going to put it, but they're going to have a few plants, you know, 10 or less plants of each different thing.
00:27:18
Speaker
We'll run that as something general. But if you do know for sure, hey, this is where my tomatoes are going or my corn or my flowers, whatever, let us know. And again, bring those samples in differently because tomatoes are a great example of they're very heavy feeders and they're also a little bit of a diva when it comes to
00:27:38
Speaker
levels that have to be kind of right on point and one of those is called the heart's ratio and so you'll only get that for a tomato sample and that will be kind of something automatic that happens when we plug in that's what you're growing there and so this refers to the magnesium to potassium levels and so tomatoes can get yellow shoulder and different ripening disorders if the magnesium is out of whack with the potassium and
00:28:04
Speaker
And so that's something why I'm like tomatoes definitely bring it in separately or blueberries, right? Like blueberries really need a low pH. So you don't want to bring that sample in with this as the same sample. You're going to run your raspberries or blackberries on cause they need different things. So if you can be specific, be specific. That's a great point because like if we know it's a home garden so many times they'll say, well, it's a home garden.
00:28:27
Speaker
But if you're really into let's love the tomato example if they're really into tomatoes you can have to dig a little bit deeper and say you know do you have any tomatoes do you have to come investigate with them to see if it's really just which is gonna give you great results if you just say home garden and that's fine but as you get on a larger commercial scale or so samples are broken down into homeowner and commercial.
00:28:48
Speaker
And when you get into commercial level sample results, they're much more specific. And generally, they're for a very targeted crop, as Alexis pointed out. So two totally different categories in our soil sample system is homeowner on the horticultural side, homeowner and commercial. Even the forms are different. Homeowner tends to be general. It'll be things like deciduous shrub.
00:29:11
Speaker
Whereas commercial will be blueberries, a specific plant, if that makes sense. Right. Do you know if I haven't looked at all the new things that we've got now, is there a commercial, uh, flower one yet? I had, I didn't see it the last time I was looking at categories, but it's supposed to be coming. Isn't it Alexis?
00:29:30
Speaker
I'm not sure. So I'm only saying this because it's personal, but I've done some research on it. For those of you who listen, who maybe are doing flowers on a larger scale, I tell my cut flower growers to run their, and I do this, and I tell my growers to do this, to run their sample as a tomato sample because we have good data out there to compare what flower nutrients are to tomato nutrient. And we know what those ratio is. So if your soil test for a tomato says put down
00:29:59
Speaker
one pound of nitrogen. We know that flowers only need about half of what tomatoes are or whatever. I'm just making up numbers right now, but half of that. So I know I only have to recommend half a pound if they're doing flowers, flower crops. So when you get your soil test results, you get both the actual absolute results, the numbers
00:30:18
Speaker
and you get the recommendation from the agent. It's not just the agent's recommendation. If you're a little more advanced, you can say, I know why you're saying this is the recommendation for tomatoes, but I'm going to use my knowledge of this to interpret the results a little differently. Yeah, absolutely.
00:30:34
Speaker
You get a lot of info on a soil test and you get, yeah, you'll get the eight, what the agent has to say, but you'll get those numbers. So you get your soil pH number, you'll get the pounds per acre of phosphorus that you have and magnesium and things like that. And then you'll get a recommendation. Well, so, um, based on Alexis's encouragement, to be honest, I feel comfortable admitting and get also based on my great experience with my,
00:31:02
Speaker
Agent Ray walking me through my first soil test. Um, I'm comfortable admitting now that I'm going to put in a 200 by 50 foot, uh, small orchard with some apples. And I'm also going to be putting in a plot in my landscaping that has a couple of junipers, a couple of, uh, dogwoods and some other perennials like that. Is there anything that I should be doing differently for those Ray?
00:31:29
Speaker
The main thing will be, um, keeping in mind when you pull a soil sample, once again, that's the basis of a good recommendation. Pulling the samples, you got to think where the roots are going to be ultimately on those crops and where are the roots going to be on a perennial tree on a, I guess trees are about definition perennial, but they're going to be deeper. So you're looking at 12 plus inches on some of those things. And I would have to ask a lot more questions. Is it a dwarf tree, semi dwarf, so on and so forth. Just keep in mind, that's going to be a deeper soil sample. That's the biggest difference there.
00:32:00
Speaker
And we ask a few more questions, we get into more calcium, particularly on like apple trees, and take a lot closer look at some ratios of things, because that gets into the commercial side of things. And we don't, then I encourage people, I stop and say, are you keeping records? Because Josh already alluded to it, records become so important here.
00:32:22
Speaker
as you get into the perennial crops of taking a good consistent soil sample, seeing the crops response to whatever you applied your inputs, the previous inputs. That becomes a big deal, not only the mechanical things behind it like the sample depth, but also keeping records. I start to flip the switch in my mind when someone is commercial and start to think about things like that, and start to really whittle down and narrow down the crops. You said what, apples and what?
00:32:52
Speaker
What is some landscaping where I'm gonna have a couple of Chinese junipers and a couple of dogwoods and while I'm at it I'm just you know extension is so helpful So I'm gonna ask one other thing too while I'm here in the office, you know, I Don't know what this bit is that I'm playing out but I like it
00:33:12
Speaker
I'm trying to envision this, Brett. It's like a mini arboretum. I like it. Yeah. And I also have a mighty, mighty oak tree out in front of my house that is a number of years old. And I want to make sure that that guy is healthy too. Should I be soil testing for them?
Tissue Testing & Plant Health
00:33:31
Speaker
Absolutely. And are there in different zones? It goes back to the discussion that we had just before you said the front lawn, then you have a back area. So those are obviously going to be functionally different zones just by the very definition. Probably maybe on different slopes, maybe not. But ones in the front and ones in the back. So I automatically kind of break those into zones. Yeah. Most of the business is in the front, most of the parties in the back in this case. There you go. And the apples are in the back. Nice. So that's where the party's at. That's right. Cider apples.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yes. So now you're throwing curve balls. Longevity there is going to change when we make the third year recommendation. So yeah, we could have a discussion on that. So depth is one of the things, depth of soil is one thing for perennials. Depth is important and trees, we always talk about taking soil.
00:34:17
Speaker
cores, the soil samples from around the drip line of trees, because we just use that as an approximate indicator of where the feeder roots are. And it's not perfect, but it's a good starting point to start from the drip line where the limbs on average of the tree ends start there and take your sample from around that area. When you're dealing with larger perennials, I usually tell homeowners to do that.
00:34:42
Speaker
when you're taking samples for existing plants, large existing plants. Just keep that in mind. One thing you can do, like I know we're talking about soil sampling today, and soil sampling is the thing, right? It's like the number one that we're going to recommend to do. But if you are seeing some issues and you're like, well, my soil sample didn't really seem to show anything missing or I put down what I'm supposed to, especially for your perennial plants, but you can do this for annuals in your garden as well.
00:35:12
Speaker
is tissue testing. And so tissue testing is just leaves and they will squeeze out the juices, press them out and take a sample. And that's kind of what's immediately available. So where the soil testing is showing you what could be available to that root system, the leaf is going to show you what is actually in that plant at that given moment. And it could be different from a week to week basis, what's in there. And depending on the time of year,
00:35:40
Speaker
But if you're having any issues and you started first with the soil test, that is always going to be the first thing. You can then move on to foliar testing and say, you know, what am I missing? And maybe it's that, you know, you did put down that calcium, but it ran off because you've got a slope or something like that. And so we're seeing, you know, a calcium deficiency.
00:36:02
Speaker
in the leaves or it could be that your soil is compacted. So maybe you put that down, the calcium is still there, but your soil is so compacted, you're not taking it up. And so there could be some other environmental issues, some abiotic issues that are causing that plant not to be able to take up the nutrients that are technically available in your soil. That's another regional difference. And you said tissue sampling, we always called it Kleenex sampling.
00:36:31
Speaker
Somebody write that down in a book. Brett's dad is. He was not going to let that spot. He was so pumped. He was like, please stop talking. Please stop talking. I've got a joke. You're going to be running about passing it by. This is the whole part of the whole crux of extension is that we're
00:36:52
Speaker
We're talking about some data-informed decision-making. In some cases, the data will not be conclusive, at least initially. And it's like, oh, okay, well, we know that the soil isn't a problem based on the fact that we did a good sample based on what Ray had described. We had a good conversation and analysis talking to Alexis about this. So it's something else is going on here. And then you add more data points and you try to, I mean, and that's fundamentally what we're doing, which I think is really,
00:37:19
Speaker
That's why soil sampling is such like a, it's such an extension topic.
Soil Sampling in Agriculture History
00:37:25
Speaker
It's like so OG extension back, you know, way, way back because it's so, it's not, it's a really nice. It's based on records that are a hundred years old. It's amazing that like nitrogen, for instance, is based on just thousands and thousands of hours of research and crop responses.
00:37:41
Speaker
to get an approximation to come up with a composite number for something as complex because nitrate in the soil is absolutely no indication of whether or not that's going to be available to plants. Organic matter is absolutely no indication in the soil of, and nitrogen is the most limiting factor for plant growth in the world. And we have to approximate that. And the only way we can approximate it is through experience and research. So yeah, soil samples,
00:38:08
Speaker
kind of a, it's a near and dear extension topic because there's so much information and effort that have gone into these numbers. And it's interesting that it really varies. If you go out to the Western US where they have more sandy soils, it's really, really gonna look different. Or Josh, I know you have some experience in Florida and where those really sandy areas that you had experience in, they're gonna behave completely different in how they do kind of make recommendations and things, aren't they?
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, when I was in like kind of coastal Georgia was very sandy. And yeah, I mean, just in general, the south has a problem with nutrient leaching. Yeah, nutrient deficiency, but specifically like certain micronutrients like, yeah, yeah, more on deficiency is very widespread. And then when I was out in New Mexico, they have
00:39:02
Speaker
It's almost always your recommend or the recommendations are coming back for sulfur and then also like EC or soluble salt buildup is a huge deal, right? Like salinity is kind of the mother of all issues out there. And what's the what's the sulfur application?
00:39:19
Speaker
I want to say it has to do with soils being like way too basic. Yeah. It's like sulfur is sort of like the opposite of lime as far as the soil pH adjustment. That's something I had to learn because I didn't know those things at one point. If you have blueberries or rhododendrons, sulfur is your friend.
00:39:41
Speaker
And that's another important thing we talked about like lead time on soil samples. When you have a specialized crop like blueberries, for instance, it's really important to give yourself a year or two. I know that's a lot of lead time, but it's not uncommon for a specialized crop such as blueberries, you know, that that's acid loving, like more acid soil.
00:40:03
Speaker
And homeowners think, or even some commercial producers are like, well, we can, you know, add sulfur in the amounts that we need to neutralize that. And then we're good to go. But the problem is you need sulfur in such amounts that it would burn the roots off. So the only, uh, answer to that to do mass changes in your soil is preferably to, to put down some of those, uh, amendments before the crops ever there, these perennial crops. And that's a really great point on timing.
00:40:30
Speaker
And I know that's a very specific scenario in soil sampling, but we do stress to homeowners. And if you want to wreck a homeowner's good mood, you can say, you know, they'll come in and they plant their blueberries and then, you know, it's really a pH of 8.2 or something. And they're like, well, what can we do? Well, you can start to acidify, but they're probably going to be dead before you are able to make the amount of acidification necessary. So timing is super important. Give yourself lead time for these things.
00:41:02
Speaker
I can't stress that enough in soil sampling. Yeah, in a lot of scenarios, you can come in a few months before and you can get your home garden recommendations, no problem. But some of these specialty crops, commercial producers are generally thinking ahead any which way as they're planning to put in new enterprises. So it's not a huge issue, but just be aware of that as a homeowner if you're looking to put out some blueberries.
00:41:24
Speaker
I mean, in general adjustments to soil composition are much more successful if taken gradually. Same way with like building organic matter, you know, oh, I have organic matter of, I mean, not the nutrient stuff, but like pH and like, yeah, dump, under dump, you know, 18 truckloads of compost onto my soil. And now my organic matter is 40%. That's not exactly, but not ideal either. So two, I'm sorry. I just had two more noob questions. Yeah, go for it.
00:41:53
Speaker
So one is how big of an area, maybe it's not even the right way to ask the question, but how big of an area before I should consider taking multiple samples.
When to Take Multiple Soil Samples
00:42:05
Speaker
I know Ray, you mentioned front yard, backyard should be separate samples, but like.
00:42:10
Speaker
That's a tough one. Is there, do you have any general kind of thoughts on that? Kentucky, maybe 50 acres, 100 acres. That is absolutely uniform with uniformity is incredible. So I don't, what's your take on that, Alexis? And Josh, even you, you probably dealt with large commercial spaces that were pretty uniform.
00:42:32
Speaker
Well, I've seen in the publication, like, I mean, if something is truly, truly uniform, you know, there's no sense that's different. If you don't know that it's uniform, that's the problem. Well, yeah, because things are a mystery as to what was there historically, then you can't make any. No, you can't. You can't do that. Yeah, that's correct. But I have seen, you know, if you're looking at for like a rough number, the thing I've seen in publications is that, you know, you break a field down into
00:43:01
Speaker
something like two and a half acre grid cells and somewhere around there. But, you know, you can make, I think it's just kind of how many different samples do you really want to be taking? And, you know, what can you sort of justify? Because there is a cost associated with these. Yeah. Sometimes, yeah. Back in the, this is my other question, but I'll say,
00:43:23
Speaker
You can also take a bunch of samples if you are excited about that prospect. I was literally just going to say that. I was like, how much do you want to know? And maybe I'm confused at your question, Brett, but you're talking about how many bags do you want to bring in? Is that what you mean by a sample? Or are you talking about how many plugs I want to take? Oh, man, I missed the point. Yeah, maybe not. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about how many bags, how many individual samples. So let's say, for instance, here's one example.
00:43:52
Speaker
I live in Lexington on a quarter acre lot. I have an area in the back where I would do a vegetable garden, an area in the back where I do perennial flowers, an area in the back where I have trees. Should I be sampling each of those independently? It's a 70 foot by 50 foot area that all three of those things are located inside.
00:44:19
Speaker
Put it this way, let's assume that that's a uniform lot, and I'll revisit that in just a second. Let's assume that it's a uniform lot. How we handle that in our new soil sample program is you bring in one physical sample
00:44:32
Speaker
And then we can do what's called alternate recommendations on one sample, meaning we can do one for trees, deciduous trees. We can do one for your apples. And it'll run those, it'll take the same sample and run alternate recommendations for multiple crops. Now let's go back to like home spaces, the home lots. They tend to, from my experience, intend to vary
00:44:58
Speaker
Incredibly more so than ag fields. You may be able to assume that you know the cropping history of a 10-acre ag field. It's pretty uniform. You need one sample. But I've seen small home lawn areas that need four or five to adequately capture
00:45:15
Speaker
That area, because it's been intensively managed over the years, so it's counterintuitive. These small urban spaces or small home spaces sometimes need more samples than large ag operations, believe it or not. And it all goes back to that, well, has there been a bed there for years of azaleas or whatever? Or has that been a little spot that you've had your vegetable garden for years? And it's based on use areas and soil structure.
00:45:38
Speaker
So cropping history and structure, both of those play into that. So a small home space may need multiple samples. So yeah, yeah, it's kind of that. So I, when I, when we moved in, uh, you know, I work for the ag college, so we took six samples in the back in, in that space that I just talked about and we took probably four samples out front and they were different enough that I was glad that I took them.
00:46:03
Speaker
And now I did some follow-up samples recently and I took, I think I took in a total of four, two from the front and two from the back because I kind of knew where the general variation was. And also you mentioned the management difference, like there's the one area that has been disturbed and disturbed and disturbed and disturbed with tillage and the other area has just been
00:46:25
Speaker
Growing up into a mass of biomass and flowers and grass and dying back and no, no, not touched at all. And that kind of, that kind of discrepancy. And so my other question is noob question before I turn it back over to Alexis is how do you, I mean, is this soil test every year?
Frequency of Soil Tests
00:46:41
Speaker
Is that the recommendation or is that overkill oversampling? Is that depends for homeowners, if it's a home garden, it doesn't absolutely have to be, uh, every year.
00:46:54
Speaker
I oftentimes say every three years is fine unless you see that you have to correct a rather large pH problem, for instance.
00:47:03
Speaker
And then I want that homeowner to take a sample that year and then come in and bring me a sample the next year to see how effective their lime did in neutralizing or adjusting that pH. But for homeowners, a lot of times if it's a home lawn, not a lot's going on besides just mowing, not a lot of disturbances every three years. But Alexis, you're a commercial people that may not be often enough. Is that right? For like flowers, do you do every year?
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah. So I would recommend if you're cropping intensively, then every year would be ideal, especially if you're adding amendments or you're covered cropping in some way every year. So if you're putting down compost, if you're covered cropping, you need to kind of see what's working for you and what's not. So doing the value of the crop also, you have a very valuable crop there.
00:47:48
Speaker
And I tell people to take that into account. If it's a valuable crop, I'm going to do it every year regardless. Well, and it's not like soil sampling is that expensive when you do have to pay like here in Kentucky, if you have to pay at all, not a, not some counties run specials, like they have a sponsor and so certain times of the year.
00:48:05
Speaker
if you bring a soil test and it's free but even if it's not free it's like seven bucks it's still seven bucks maybe ten bucks and that like you get organic matter with that and even if you have to send it off so like when i was buying a house one of the stipulations of buying a house was a good soil sample result because i was farming so i that was important.
00:48:24
Speaker
but i needed those results quickly and i couldn't wait two weeks to send it off to uk i needed them that week so i send it off to a private lab and it was like twenty bucks maybe maybe thirty dollars but like that was max and i got a lot of stuff that go with that so.
00:48:39
Speaker
It's not, it's, if you're going to put, you know, if you're going to spend a hundred dollars on seed, um, and if you're a commercial operation, you're probably spending a lot more than that on inputs. A $30 test is a drop in the bucket for what that can do for you. If you don't have to put down a lot of fertilizer or, you know, you do, it can save your crop. So to me, it's like kind of not even, not even on the, in the ballpark for something to worry about.
00:49:09
Speaker
price-wise. In light of this, it's a handful of plugs in the bucket. A handful of plugs in the bucket, man. It's fine. Yeah. I wanted to, and maybe this like makes me sound defensive, but Brett said something about how like there's so many different variables and we always are trying to collect these different data points and
00:49:28
Speaker
any of you who maybe have ever been frustrated when talking to your extension agent because they just don't seem to have an answer for you. Just a reminder, I've said it once, I believe, I'll say it again, plants don't read the book, they do what they want, and mother nature is very variable. And so we can have your soil sample come in, we can do a foliar test and all of those come back good. And we're like, okay, so it's not nutrient.
00:49:51
Speaker
So we have to go through all of these different things to figure out, you know, maybe it is your soil, but it's the texture of your soil. It's not the nutrient capacity or the holding capacity of that. And so you have to be kind of patient and there's no easy, there's not always an easy answer. Uh, and I feel like I say that a lot when I'm talking to people like, why is my tree suddenly seem to be dying?
Diagnosing Plant Issues
00:50:12
Speaker
Well, it's not suddenly dying. It's been dying and it's just now showing this symptoms of it. And,
00:50:20
Speaker
Nothing like a Buddhist, like we're all dying. We're all dying here. There were signs. I don't know if you got how many times you guys have heard this, but like, you know, you see this big old oak tree, maybe that's dying and you're like, well, it's just, it's old and older tree. You know, you can tell it's old and it's been through some things because it's in an urban environment.
00:50:44
Speaker
People are like, well, oak trees live out in the forest for like 300 years, and I only planted this 30 years ago. And I'm like, well, but the life span is- They have their friends to lean on. Yeah, they have very different life. There's more that goes into that. And as someone who has a master's in plant science, I definitely don't always have the answer. And there's plenty of PhDs, despite what they might tell you, that don't always have the answer.
00:51:08
Speaker
Whoa, the effects of like growing within a forest context and like growing alongside other plants, that stuff is crazy. Neil sent me an article about, I think it was in the New York Times, it was about these like little micro forest planting things that they're doing.
00:51:30
Speaker
And the idea that these things grow so much faster than they would if there was just one of them. They have their friends? Yeah. Even though they're competing with each other. I mean, so like Josh's, they have their friends to lean on is like a real...
00:51:41
Speaker
You know, we're tricksters around here. We're jokesters. He's real. This is real. That was a real comment. I remember getting really upset with a forestry professor that had this question. Well, actually it was botany. And I won't mention Dr. Ralph's last name. Famous botanist at Berea. Really, I mean, super guy, but he loved putting this question on his test. He says, what's the most limiting factor keyword? What's the, or he said most limiting nutrient.
00:52:09
Speaker
in forestry growth. And I was like, no, it has to be nitrogen because, you know, I was thinking of nutrients. And then, you know, the test came back and he said, wrong. He said, I'm like sunlight. And I remember us getting in this argument. Sunlight is not a nutrient. He said, oh, I meant to put factor. So we
00:52:24
Speaker
whole thing and I was like, and the whole class got a point and I was like, I will not back down. It's the only argument. I have one of the few arguments I remember with a professor in my undergrad. I was like, it is not a new trend. Sunlight is not a new trend, but yeah. The trick of the riddle is that I meant factor. Yes. The trick is I misspoke myself when I really actually meant that. The question's inside the question. I know what I meant. It's what the words mean. Ecosystems. And I guess he was just speaking. He's trying to get us to think more on an ecosystems approach.
Understanding Soil Health
00:52:52
Speaker
Sure.
00:52:53
Speaker
And soil sampling kind of speaks to that because it is a snapshot. A lot of times, soil sampling is a good base. It's a very, very important base for understanding of growth and plant health. And if that doesn't tell us all we need to know as agents, we will go a lot of times further into other deeper investigations such as tissue analysis that Alexis mentioned so that we can kind of put
00:53:18
Speaker
other data points into play there, but soil sampling just can't be understated. It's, it's just, it's always the first thing I say. Yeah. And I know that's a broken record. Our master gardeners, Alexis are so sick of us saying that, but I teach the soils. I teach the soil section for the master gardeners like around this general area and they hate me. I think so.
00:53:40
Speaker
Well, I was gonna say it's one of the things where, you know, you can, a lot of people, you can look at a plant and maybe you don't know what's wrong with it, but you can tell when it's in distress or you can tell when it's not. You feel it inside. I'm that way with soil, unlike the rest of you. No, but that's the important thing about a soil test is it
00:54:00
Speaker
It kind of reveals like the mystery of what's going on there because there aren't, you can't just look at a soil for the most part and know that something's off, right? Like you can't see. But it's good, dark soil, Josh. It's gonna be amazing. It's good, dark soil. And really it's like super anaerobic and has to be an oxygen. It's filthy because it's dead. That's just juicy. It's like, there's a smell. It's got a sour smell to it. It's a sour smell, yeah. Do you all have a favorite flavor of soil at all? Of what?
00:54:30
Speaker
Favorite flavor of soil? Crunching. I love Earthies. I always go to Costco when they're giving out the soil samples. That's why. I like me some good. I like a clay loam. I like a clay loam. Yeah, I like a loam. But I know what I'm good at. Yeah, clay is good. Do we have a plan to take us home?
Recap on Soil Testing
00:54:52
Speaker
So to recap, we'll do a quick recap for you. In recap. Do a soil test.
00:54:58
Speaker
But if you're not sure, know what you're going to sample for and if you're not sure how deep to go. If it's a perennial, you're going deeper, you're going 8 to 12 inches. If it's an annual, you're looking at 6 to 8. And if it's turf, you're probably looking at 2 to 4, something like that. That's a good rough number for you. And if you don't know, call your local extension office.
00:55:20
Speaker
and ask them, and maybe they have a probe for you that you can rent for your soil sampling. So do it. We recommend doing it in the fall for most areas of the, I don't know what it would be for Florida and Georgia, but in Kentucky, it's fall. I bet. I'm sure it's the same thing. They don't have seasons. Yeah, I guess we could say do it, you know, four to six months before you plan on doing your major crop maybe is a good way to do it.
00:55:50
Speaker
and then get that soil sample done, get your results interpreted, make sure you're specific about what you're asking for and there's no shame in asking for it. So be specific about what you're growing there and what else am I missing?
00:56:08
Speaker
It's a pretty good recap. Just remember it all starts with pulling that good sample and pull a good sample. If in doubt, just call your local extension office and get details on what they need to give you the best results for what you're doing. And if you are not in Kentucky and don't have a county extension office and you don't know how to find your extension office or something along those lines, you can contact us at hortculturepodcast at l.uky.edu. You can find that in the show notes.
00:56:35
Speaker
You can also find us on Instagram at hort-culture-pod, and you can send us a message over there if you need more info on soil testing or foliar testing or wanting to hear something else. That's really cool. We always welcome. Otherwise, we're just sitting around. We're like, what are we going to talk about next time? And trying to find something that- We're nothing without you. We're nothing without you, our audience. It's beautiful. And we're also nothing without your reviews. So if you could leave us one, that'd be great. Thanks.
00:57:06
Speaker
But if you're listening on Spotify and they don't do the rating thing, make sure you just make sure you're following us. And as penance, tell 10 friends and make them listen to it. Yeah, please. Just kidding. Really appreciate y'all listening.
00:57:20
Speaker
Yeah, we hope you like it. We do this for you all. I mean, it's fun for us to get to see each other, but- We enjoy talking about you. And chat, and we like to talk about plants, and this gives us a good excuse. When I have YouTube people that I watch, I refer to them as my YouTube friends. I actually just refer to them as my friends, and then people are like, oh.
00:57:37
Speaker
And I'm like, my best friends. Actually. My bonsai friends. You can't meet them because they live in San Francisco. They don't live around here. They live in Canada. We'll be your podcast friends. If you refer to us as your friends, that is the most awesome thing that I've ever conceived of. And if you say that and haven't left us a review, you're dead to me. Yeah. You ain't no friend of mine. You ain't no friend of mine.
00:58:02
Speaker
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00:58:30
Speaker
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