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How Soil Testing Impacts the Farmer and Envionment and How to take a sample for the Soil Testing
- Take a shovel, trowel, soil auger or other ideal tool
- Take Sample at a depth of 5 - 7 inches
- Remove all the debris, grass, stones
- Atleast Take 6 or 7 samples,Properly mix them in a bucket then take a 1 pint of soil is collected
- Spread the soil taken over a dry paper and let it dry for 24 hours. Most of the labs prefer dry soil
- Label it and send to the test centre, or the lab
Importance of Soil Testing
- Applying fertiliser to the Crops without knowing the needs of your soil will lead to over-fertilisation.
- After testing the soil and getting fertiliser recommendations, you can stop using an excessive fertiliser. This will be better for your crops and also to the environment.
- Over Fertilisation leads to Fertiliser burn and leaves turning yellow. It also result in nutrient leaching, water pollution and damages to the surrounding aquatic life.
Soil testing Impacts to the farmer
Testing the soil has plenty of benefits for farmers. Healthy soil improves crop growth. Farmers can begin testing their soil before harvesting to get some knowledge how they can improve their soil.
- Soil testing Improving yields and profitability because you are providing necessary nutrients to your crops.
- Increasing consistency of nutrient availability across a field.
- Soil testing gives same crop growth over the farm. It will help the individual plants stronger against weeds and simplifies the cultivation and spraying.
- It also give the information which nutrients are most needed. Helping you allocate your fertilizer to those nutrients that will give you the greatest profit increase.
Soil Testing Impacts to the environment
Soil Testing can also help the environment
- Good efficient use of plant nutrients which causes less losses from leaching or runoff into waterways.
- Poorly nourished plants leave less plant residue to hold the soil in the same place . Plant residue helps to build some soil and saves the plant from wind and water erosion.
- Using the Perfect levels of nutrients helps increase yields for the farmer.