Permasystems
  • About Us
  • Products
    • Water tanks >
      • Ferrocement
      • Bushman
    • Planters
    • Homes and Roofs
  • Learn
    • Permaculture and Ecological Design
    • Catching Rainwater
    • Laminated Ferrocement
    • Advanced Permaculture Student Online
    • Installation
    • FAQ
    • Active and Passive Rainwater Harvesting
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Blog

Baseline Soil Testing

1/9/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Soil is the foundation to all life! Not to mention it is where we get our food from!! There is a lot more going on in soil than we even understand today.

Healthy soil can have thousands of species of bacteria within it, many of which have not even been identified. Soil contains many other types of organisms, including, nematodes, microarthropods and fungi. They play critical roles in the soil food web of life and help make food in the soil available to plants so they can grow healthy.

Healthy soil holds far more water than dirt and can provide all the food plants need so you don't have to apply fertilizers or pesticides.

The best way to assess the health of soil is to look at it - under a microscope. Something we have done but have found minimal life in our soil.

In order to provide a baseline for experimentation at our ecological design education and demonstration site we are going to send soil samples to multiple sources for nutrient level analysis. This is the area around our cob cabin where we have the food forest.

We have chosen the following labs based on recommendations and price:

Logan Labs - http://www.loganlabs.com/testing-services.html

UMassAmherst - http://soiltest.umass.edu/services

Texas A&M - http://soiltesting.tamu.edu/webpages/forms.html


Some of the things they will test for include:

pH
Organic Matter
Total Exchange Capacity
Sulfur

Phosphorous
Calcium
Magnesium
Potassium
Sodium
Boron
Iron
Manganese
Copper
Zinc
Aluminum
Lead
% Base Saturation Ca, Mg, K, Na

How to collect a sample:
- Use a spade, soil auger or soil sampling tube.

- Clear litter from the surface (do not remove decomposed black material).

- When using a soil auger or sampling tool, make the core or boring 6 inches
  deep into the soil (3 to 4 inches deep for permanent sod)

- When using a spade:
  • Dig a V-shaped hole and take a 1 inch slice from the smooth side of the hole.
  • Take a 1 x 1 inch core from the center of the shovel slice

- Repeat in 10 to 15 different places. Put in a clean plastic bucket or other     non-metallic container, thoroughly mix and remove a pint (or more if   additional tests are desired) as a composite sample representing the whole field or area.

- Completely fill soil sample bag or othersuitable pint container. Do not use old vegetable cans, tobacco cans, match boxes, glass containers, etc. to submit samples. If more than one sample bag is used, label bags as 1 of 2, 2 of 2, etc.

Hopefully our results will come in soon! We will post them in a blog.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Cob
    Dryland
    Dryland Permaculture Plant Profile
    Ecology
    Ferrocement
    Food
    History
    News
    Permaculture
    Plants
    Rainwater Harvesting
    Ramona
    San Diego
    Soil
    Sustainable Design

    Archives

    January 2019
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed

Copyright Permasystems 2020
All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy

For the latest Perma-News visit us on Facebook!