Soil testing is essential to know the nutrients, soil life, and the type of plants that will thrive.
Is your soil healthy? Soil testing is common for agriculture and botanical industries, and it’s becoming more common for the average gardener. There is nothing more disappointing than to spend time planting and not reaping the benefits of your hard work. This isn’t just the concern for the typical backyard gardener. If you are in an agricultural laboratory, you know the importance of soil analysis and the testing of pH in soil samples. Here’s a summary of the basic and then how to perform a pH soil test.
The common range of soil pH varies from 4.0 to 8.0; the range of soil pH for optimal availability of plant nutrients is 6.0 to 7.0. The ability of soil to provide adequate nutrition to the plant depends upon the following factors:
Essential elements in soil
The nutrients present in soil depend upon the elemental nature of the soil and the organic material content. Soil nutrients exist both as complex insoluble compounds (organic materials) and as simple soluble forms.
Release of nutrients to plants
Simple elements in the soil are readily available for plant uptake. The complex forms (organic materials) must be broken down through decomposition to simpler, more available forms to benefit the plants.
pH of the soil solution
The pH directly affects the availability of essential nutrients. For example, though iron, manganese, and zinc become less available as the pH rises above 6.5, molybdenum and phosphorus become more available. When the soil is acidic, minerals such as zinc, aluminum, manganese, copper, and cobalt become more soluble for plants’ uptake. However, an excess of these ions can be toxic to plants. Alkaline soil contains a higher quantity of bicarbonate ions, which interferes with the normal uptake of other ions, harming plant growth.
Read the complete article and learn how to test the pH of your soil samples.
Need a Soil-Cell System?
The Soil-Cell® system simplifies the extraction of semi-volatile organic compounds in soil. The system meets the requirements to replace microwave technology with a HotBlock® unit and stainless steel extraction cells.
Related Articles
Growing Green by Measuring Soil pH
Laboratory Test for pH Soil Samples
Be the first to comment on "Soil Testing: How to Test pH"