- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Soil testing is important.

Today, we're going to find out if do-it-yourself kits are worth the effort.

That's just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Peter Richards.

Peter is our local gardener.

Hi, Peter.

- Hey.

- So we're gonna talk about soil testing.

- Yeah.

- Soil testing is very important because we always say why guess?

- Soil test.

- All right, so we actually did some soil testing.

What do we have on the table here?

- Yeah, so what we have here is, we have five different soil test kits.

- Okay.

- Now, soil testing is really, really important because that lets you know what is in your soil.

And your soil is where your plants get all of their nutrients.

And so it lets you know if you are deficient in this particular nutrient, then you need to add some more.

So before you fertilize, if you have a soil test, you know exactly how much fertilizer to put down in order to put, make that soil perfect for your plants to grow.

I've always been curious about some of these home test kits, soil tests that you can do.

So I compared them.

- Right, that's neat.

- So, the most reliable soil tests you can get are lab-based soil tests.

So you take the soil, you send it away to a lab, they analyze it with professional equipment.

They do this all day, every day.

- Yes, they do.

- They know what they're doing.

Their equipment's calibrated, all that stuff.

So you get accurate results.

So, that is one kind of soil test.

And I'd say that's the gold standard.

So we sent some soil to UT Soil Labs and they gave us results.

We also have a couple of other soil test kits that I compared to them.

So the first one here is, this is a soil probe, okay?

So this probe is, it's a four-in-one probe and there are many like it.

In fact, that's the case for all of these.

There's many like it.

I chose one of each kind of soil test.

So this one will test brightness of the light.

It'll test soil moisture, it'll test pH, and it'll also test fertility, which I'm not exactly sure what that is.

But it's pretty simple.

You take it, you stick it in the soil, you wait a couple minutes and you read, - Convenient.

- What it says.

Yeah, so very easy to use.

- Yeah.

- The next kind, and once again, there's many tests that you can buy that are like these.

And I'm just, these are representative samples of each major kind that you can get.

So, then we have, I'm gonna call this the capsule test.

So what you do here is you put your sample in the container and then you get a capsule that contains something.

You break it open and put it in with the test, and it turns a color.

And you read it on the little strip right here.

- Okay.

- Okay.

The next kind here, we're gonna call it the drip test, okay?

Because it uses drips of chemical.

So for this one, and for the next one I'm gonna talk about, it requires that you put some soil in with water, let the soil settle out, and then take some of the water off of it in order to test the water.

Now I have a problem, and that is, is that I have a lot of clay in my soil.

- Uh huh.

- Okay, so this is some soil that I put in my, and put in water.

And that was three weeks.

That's three weeks of separation.

So you can still see that there's a lot of color here.

- Yeah, that's crazy, yeah.

- But once again, you take this, you separate it out, put in a couple drops of chemical, read against a color chart, and you can, it tells you the value.

This last part uses pills.

So instead of drops, it uses these pills.

So you pop 'em outta the containers and put 'em in and do the procedure that it says.

The interesting thing about this is that one of the pills that they give you, you drop it in with some soil and water in this container and it separates incredibly rapidly.

So in 30 seconds you have usable clear water.

So it's even clearer than this.

You know, it's perfectly clear water.

And then you can use that to do tests with.

These are the three major kinds of soil tests you can find online for home kits.

- Right.

- And so, the brand doesn't matter because there's many options for many different brands for each of these.

- Okay.

- So they're all pretty, they're all pretty straightforward.

There's a little bit of a learning curve on it.

Now that I've done it once, it would be much easier for me to do it again.

Okay, let's talk about what I did.

- Alright.

- 'Cause that's kind of important.

So, what I did was I went into my yard and I got 14 samples.

- Fourteen, that's a lot.

- And so they were taken from the surface down to about six inches deep.

- Very important.

- So we get a good core of what's going on.

- And you were consistent in that, right?

- Yes.

- It makes a difference.

- Mm-hmm, yep.

Then I took it and I put it out on a cookie sheet and dried it at room temperature.

At that point, if you were just sending it to a soil lab or doing tests, that's good enough.

- Yeah.

- But because I had to have accurate results across five tests that compared to each other, I went ahead and took the soil and I smashed it with a hammer and got it down to a powder.

And the reason I did this is because now I can mix it together and so that it is uniform and everybody gets the same test.

- Yeah, it looks like hot cocoa mix or something like that.

- No, it does.

I joked with that with my kids.

[laughing] So, then from that, I took and I put some in the box and sent it off to UT Labs.

And then, I also did the experiments as exactly as it was said in the instructions for each of these kits.

- Got it.

- I used distilled water.

And so, all of the equipment was triple rinsed in distilled water between uses or before the first use, because I'm trying to get this exact, as exact as possible.

I used distilled water instead of tap water because my tap water probably has chemicals in it and nutrients that are gonna affect my results.

- Yeah, it would.

- And I don't wanna do that.

So I followed the instructions exactly on all these kits with one exception.

And that is in how long I let the soil settle out of the water.

- Okay.

- It recommended 30 minutes to 24 hours.

After 24 hours my water was still brown.

And being that this is a color test, that's gonna really affect it.

- Right.

- So, I let it settle for a week, and then I think it was usable.

Also, I did not look at the UT soil test results until after I had done all the tests at home.

That way, I wouldn't be biased.

I was blind.

- Right.

- In that.

- And the other thing to note is I did not test nitrogen.

I did not test nitrogen because nitrogen is incredibly transient in the soil.

It only lasts a few weeks.

And so even if you are testing nitrogen in a lab soil test kit, you have put your soil in there, you send it off, they test the nitrogen.

By the time you get the results back, the nitrogen in your soil is different.

So it's really not useful to test.

- Right, which is why you don't see it on your test results.

- Exactly.

Let's talk about results.

- That's what I want to hear.

- That's what what we want to know here.

- All right, let me get ready, okay.

- So pH, you know, it is the, you know, probably the single most important thing.

- Yes.

- And so the soil lab said that the soil has a pH of six.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- So the soil probe, I stuck it in the soil and it gave, I did it three times.

Now, it gave me a soil reading of anywhere between 5.6 and 6.2.

So it's pretty good.

It's pretty good.

It is in the range.

- It's good.

- It's a workable amount.

- Yeah, that's good.

- The problem with the soil test probe is that you need to make sure you read it at the correct time, as the pH is slowly moving the entire time.

So, if you stick it in and come back in 15 minutes, you're gonna get the wrong reading.

So that's kind of interesting.

But it was pretty easy.

And it was pretty accurate as we see.

- Yeah.

And we should say a pH of six is not bad.

- No, that's good.

- Not bad at all.

- Yep, so now, let's go over here to the capsule test.

So this was, you put a little dirt in, put some water in.

It was very difficult because I have such clay soil to be able to see what the accurate color is.

Because if you notice, the soil is about the same color as some of my readings.

- It sure is.

- So it made it really hard.

But my best guess was it was about 6.2.

So a little high, but we're really close still.

- In the neighborhood.

- Yeah.

Okay, so now, same thing with the drops.

You're comparing against color charts.

So it's kind of hard to be accurate since you do have a little bit of tint in the water.

But it came in as somewhere between six and seven.

So I, that's, it gave me a color for six and a color for seven.

I had to guess in between the two, so.

- That one, okay.

- Yeah.

Now the pills, I put it in, and that is actually, you take a test strip and, and you look at it on a test strip and compare it to the colors.

I got a pH of 5.5 and it was a dead ringer on the color, but that was fairly low.

So some of these work, some of 'em don't work as well.

- Right.

- So it's, it's kind of, it's a little bit of a crap shoot.

I was very impressed with the probe though, because the ease, I could take it out.

I could stick it in my ground out in my garden and get a reading.

I don't even have to dig any dirt.

- Right.

- You know?

- Right and get the results a lot faster.

- Get the results really fast.

Once again, it's a range.

- It's a range, yeah.

- But it was pretty close.

- Okay.

- So now, let's talk about phosphorus and potassium.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Now this goes into what you would call in chemistry, quantitative analysis.

So how much of something exists?

It's easy to know if something exists or not, but to know how much requires some really specific parameters.

And these are, once again, are all color based.

So, how close is your color to what the sample is in order to tell what it is.

A lot of these are highly dependent on time.

So it says, take this, put it in here.

Wait exactly 10 minutes and take the reading.

- Alright.

- And on some of these, the color was moving the whole time.

At 10 minutes, I took the reading and the color continued to move afterwards.

- Wow, so you could see that.

- How about that?

- So it's, you know, that time is really, really important and can kind of skew your answers a little bit.

- Right.

- So let's talk about-- - Did you take it right at the 10 minute mark?

- I took it right as it said, right at 10 minutes.

- Right at the 10 minute mark, okay.

- So let's look at phosphorus here.

So the soil labs said that it gave me 49 as my number.

That is pounds per acre.

I converted that to parts per million so that I could compare to the, to the rest of 'em.

So that compares out to 24 and a half parts per million of phosphorus in my soil.

A soil probe does not test phosphorus or potassium.

It only tests pH.

- pH, okay.

- So that's out.

- That's out, okay.

- So capsules here, so the, the phosphorus test, once again, you have to read the colors and I, and it doesn't give me a value.

So it only gives me depleted, deficient, adequate, sufficient, surplus.

That's all it gives.

And there's no equivalent to what it is.

It said I was deficient, whereas the soil lab test said I was high.

So that is very wrong.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- Soil test drops.

It said, once again, it was colors.

I had to guess, my best guess is it said there was 120 milligrams per liter.

Now, I had to convert that to parts per million to make it work.

- Yes, math.

- That is a very dicey calculation to make because it all depends on how heavy your soil is.

As in weight heavy.

- Yeah.

- And so, my best guess is that comes out to about 74 parts per million.

It was three times higher what the soil lab said.

Okay.

The pills.

After I did them, it came out to eight parts per million.

- Wow!

- Once again, that is what, one third of what the soil test said.

- Right.

- So it was very wrong as well.

So the conclusions on the phosphorus are that the soil test from the lab, assuming it is correct, which I have no reason to believe it's not, that all of these home soil test kits don't work for phosphorus.

- For phosphorus.

- They gave me completely wrong answers.

- Those things were all over the place.

- Yeah and it wasn't just wrong in the same direction.

- Yeah.

- It was wildly all over.

So, potassium, - Okay.

- Let's talk about that.

So, the soil test results from the lab said that my potassium level was 192, which it said was high.

Once again, converting it to parts per million, that's 96 parts per million.

Once again, soil probe can't test it.

That's fine.

The capsule test, it said that I was sufficient.

Once again, it gave me deficient, adequate, surplus, sufficient.

- Yeah, no values, yeah.

- So it gave me sufficient.

- So that's about the same.

You could say it's about the same, okay.

Now with the drops, with the drop test, I got, once again, it was a, it was a range because you had to compare it to colors.

It gave me somewhere between 120 to 240 milligrams per liter.

'cause that's what the samples, those were the samples I could compare against.

So that's somewhere between 74 and 148 parts per million.

So once again, it's in the range.

It's in the range.

- It is, yeah.

- And it tended to be a little closer to the 120, which means it was a little lower.

So, we're close.

- It's close.

- So the pills, that was really interesting to do.

So what you did is you put it in, you crushed this pill in the water and it formed a precipitate.

In other words, it formed really little pieces of solid in there and you had to judge the color of the solid versus the charts that you had.

- My goodness, yeah.

- And so it was kind of hard.

- Yeah.

- It came out, I think-- - You think.

[Chris laughs] - Once again, it was hard to read.

To about 80 parts per million.

So it was a little low.

- Yeah, that's low.

- So, you have yeah, overall pH, it's in the ballpark.

- Yeah.

- Phosphorus was way out.

Potassium is kind of close.

- Okay.

- Those, I'd say, are probably my overall conclusions.

So I don't know if it would be useful to go and buy these to try and get actual accurate readings off of.

- Right.

- Now, now that I have them, will I continue to use 'em, yes.

- Yeah, so that was gonna be my question, would you use them, okay.

- Yeah.

- I'll continue to use what I have.

I probably wouldn't buy more.

- Right.

- And so, especially the pH probe, I really like the idea of being able to just go out, stick it in the ground somewhere and get a pH reading pretty quick.

- Right, but it's just the pH reading.

- It's just pH, that's what it does.

- Yeah, not phosphorous.

- Right, yeah.

For the phosphorus, I won't use it 'cause it's obviously not right.

Potassium, if I need to do a quick test and I don't wanna spend the time and the money to send it off to a soil lab, I might use one of those.

Yeah, pH was pretty accurate in all of them.

So for the lab tests, obviously are going to be your best bet.

- Yes, yes.

- They're gonna be the most accurate.

We use UT Extension Soil Lab that's in Nashville.

So we just had to take and fill this box up and mail it off to Nashville.

Now there are a lot of states that have soil labs as part of their Extension.

And so we have created a list on our website where we have links to all of their, all of the sites for all the different states that do have that.

And so you can go there and see if your state has a soil test lab and use it if you want.

- And you find out that many of the states actually do have a-- - Yes, many states do.

- That's good.

The prices range from free in Arkansas.

If you're an Arkansas resident, getting a test, it's free.

- That's good.

- All the way up to about $35.

- Okay, not bad.

- For a test.

Now, on top of that though, you also have to pay postage, 'cause you do have to mail this.

And it costs me about 10 bucks to mail this to Nashville.

Okay, so just as a, something to consider in there.

- Okay and you had just the one box?

- I just had the one box.

Yeah, just one box.

Now, if your, if your state doesn't have an Extension lab or if you need faster results, most cities of substantial size have a lab, a private lab that will do soil tests.

You'd have to Google it to find out where they are, how much they charge.

I can't tell you that.

But you don't have to pay postage 'cause you can just drop it off at the lab.

Also, they often have about a one day turnaround on those test results.

With the Extension lab, it's about a week or so after they, after you send it off.

Then you can also though get lab-based soil test kits online and you can buy them.

There's several of them available where you, they send you the kit, you put soil in the container, and you mail it off to the lab and they send you results.

The cool thing about that is that many of those labs, the cost of shipping it is included in the cost of the test.

- Yes, that is true.

- So you don't have to pay for it.

And from what I was able to see, those are anywhere from $25-$35 for those.

Now one of the huge advantages of soil lab tests in general that you will not get in home test kits is that you get some micronutrient analysis.

- Yes, yes.

- And so on our UT Extension, we got calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, manganese, boron, and sodium tests as well.

And we could have ordered additional if we'd wanted to.

We were just going for the basic here.

And so the lab tests will give you some of those micronutrients, which can affect plant health as much as your macronutrients can.

- Without a doubt.

- Also, a lot of the labs, both the Extension labs and some of the private labs and the mail-in labs, also give you recommendations.

- I think that is so important.

- So they say, well if you want to grow this, you tell 'em what you're looking to grow, then you should add this much fertilizer at this time of year.

And so, you know, for the UT Extension one, we have three pages of recommendations.

- Right, yeah.

So, and they offer crop codes, you know, so they'll know specifically what it is that you're trying to grow and you get your recommendations accordingly.

- So in my case here, this is from my yard at home.

I asked for warm season turf grass 'cause that's what most of it is.

I also did blueberries, apples and pears and brambles.

So, for my blackberries so I could get some recommendations so I can treat those individual areas where those are.

- All those recommendations pretty clear for you to understand as a homeowner?

- Yep, yep.

Yeah and so yeah, the lab test gives you that.

You don't get that with the home tests, but the home tests can give you some quick results, assuming that they are accurate.

- Assuming that they're accurate.

Peter, thank you so much.

- Yeah, sure.

- Pretty fun.

Yeah, this is good.

- Yeah, it was fun to do it.

- Yeah and learned a lot as well, so thank you much.

Appreciate that.

[gentle country music] - Well, the garden has been in the ground for several years.

We're seeing some nutrient deficiencies in the plants.

So it's time to take a soil sample and to find out what's going on in the soil.

To do that, you can use something like this, a soil probe, which you simply stick in the ground and it gives you soil here.

And you can take it and put it in the bucket, or you can take this trowel like most people have and you can dig in the ground.

The best place to get the soil sample is about six inches down.

So we'll dig in here and get a small sample in this area.

And when you soil sample, you go to different places in your garden and put it in the bucket.

Now we've got all of our samples and we are gonna get out all of the organic matter because we don't need that in the soil sample.

And then we mix all of these samples together.

Mostly you need about one cup of soil.

So we'll let this dry and mix it up again.

And then we'll send it off to our local soil lab to find the analysis of what we need.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's our Q and A segment.

Y'all ready?

- Yeah.

- All right, these are some great questions.

All right, here's our first viewer email.

"I have two maple trees "and I want to trim off the bottom branches.

Can I do this and when?"

And this is Robert from Pensacola, Florida.

So can he do this, Joseph?

- Yeah, yeah definitely.

He can definitely do that.

It's a very good picture.

And I see he's got some lower branches, some suckers on there.

He can definitely cut those back.

And looking kinda at the size, he may be able to take off some of those lower branches there, just one or two of those.

- Yeah, I wondered about that too.

- Just to kind of lift it up.

You know, you never wanna remove, remove more than one third of the canopy at a time.

And of course, now is a great time to do that.

The February, March timeframe, before it starts shooting out new growth and it's, you know, winter time, him being down in Florida, you don't have to worry too much about the cold, but you know, make sure you don't do it in freezing temperatures 'cause it can damage those cells and kind of go into the new growth.

- That's a good point.

- So you might not have to worry too much about that.

- Yeah, might not have to.

Yeah, good clean cuts, you definitely want.

- Good clean cuts.

Always clean your pruners between cuts.

Use a good alcohol and you can get in there and use that or Lysol spray.

So I typically use that, just spray it real good.

- Probably more convenient.

- Wipe it down, yeah.

- Alright, that's good.

Anything you wanna add to that, Peter?

- No, yeah, you just, yeah, it's limbing up.

- Yeah, limbing up, and- - And as you cut the bottom branches, it'll grow taller.

You know, so if you want to, every year you can go in and take a couple out and just raise the bottom of it if you want.

- I think it'd be nice.

Yeah, it's a good picture.

So, appreciate that, Robert, thank you so much for that question.

Alright, here's our next viewer email.

"If I could buy a potato from the store and plant it in my garden, will it produce more potatoes?"

I like that question.

This is Kim in Estill, South Carolina.

All right Ms. Kim, we're gonna hear from Peter on this, right?

So what do you think about that, Peter?

- So can you, yes.

- Can you, yeah!

- But... - But, but.

[laughing] - So, store-bought potatoes have a couple of problems.

First one is, is that they're often treated with a chemical that keeps the eyes from sprouting.

That way, they last longer on the store shelves and don't start growing in the grocery store.

- Growth retardant is what that's called, yep.

- Yeah and so, you may have a hard time getting your potatoes to sprout.

- That's right.

- So that's one thing.

- That's one thing.

- If you can get it to sprout, it'll probably grow.

- Right.

- But that brings in the second one.

And that is, is that we highly recommend that you buy seed potatoes because seed potatoes have been tested to not have disease.

- There you go.

- And so they are certified as disease free.

And that you're not, every time you put a potato from the store in the ground, you're not gonna get this disease.

But every once in a while, you might.

And the problem is, is that these diseases stay in the soil for years and make it so you cannot grow potatoes in that area for possibly decades.

And so, if you're willing to risk that, you could do it.

But I'd recommend seed potatoes.

They also are usually a better size for planting.

They tend to be smaller, whereas you, you know, in the grocery store they're trying to give you the biggest potato you can get.

- Right.

- But the two diseases that really kill ya with potatoes are phytophthora, you know, that's a root rot.

And then potato scab.

Now you think, well they grow potatoes year after year after year in like Idaho.

And they do, but they go through, but they go through and they actually, they treat the soil with chemicals that as homeowners we can't get.

- Right.

- And so they, you know they can do that.

We can't.

So yes, I would recommend seed potatoes if you can get them.

- If you can get 'em, I would recommend that.

But it's always nice to experiment.

You just wanna experiment just see if it works, but yeah.

That's good, Peter.

Have you done this before?

- Yes.

- Yeah, I figured he has.

So, what was your success rate?

I mean, did they actually sprout?

Did you-- - So actually in the square foot garden a couple years ago, since we were planting potatoes in the fall.

It's hard to find seed potatoes in the fall.

- Right, okay.

- And so, we ended up having to go to the grocery store and get potatoes from there.

And they sprouted and they eyed and they grew for a while and then they did not produce, they died.

I don't think it had anything to do with the potato.

Yeah, I think it was environmental conditions.

- Okay, yeah, but you tried.

- Something else is if you do want to use those potatoes, you might want to, or the store-bought potatoes, you might want try growing 'em in a raised bed or a barrel or something like that.

That way if you do have a problem, you can just dig all the soil out, throw it out in the woods, fill with new soil and go again.

- Good point.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that.

Yeah, that is a good point.

Yeah, so there you have it, Ms. Kim.

It's been tried, it's been tried.

Well thank you for the question.

Good question.

Alright Peter, Joseph, that was fun.

That was fun.

Thank you so much.

- Thanks.

- Thank you.

- Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is questions@familyplotgarden.com and the mailing address is Family Plot 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee 38016.

Or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

If you want to get more information about soil testing or anything we talked about today, go to familyplotgarden.com.

We have lots of information to help you in your garden this year.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]