timbercruiser

It seems the trend for state financial cutbacks is hitting the state labs that do the testing so plan ahead in your time frame needs. In Florida they have one technician to do the testing for the entire state. I sent in a couple of samples this summer. The first one took 4 weeks to get the results and the other one has been gone 5 weeks without results thus far.

Soilman

Yikes! That is a long time. Another option is choosing a private lab. Many states require private soil labs to be certified by check samples exchanges. There is a national soil sample exchange as well http://www.naptprogram.org/pap/labs .

halfbakedi420

john deer does em too..think it was $40

Soilman

Yikes again! A test with all of the micronutrients, fertilizer and lime recommendations for 4 years around here would cost under $20. A basic test with OM, pH, P, K, and the 4 years of recs would be well under $10.

halfbakedi420

well we can record search...but that dont mean that joe blows soil is exactly the same as mine though.

Soilman

I agree. A soil test run in or near your home state is always a good idea. Different parts of the country have different methods for testing the soil, and different analysis are more/less important in different regions.

halfbakedi420

are you suggesting that the soil is perty close to bein the same from one county to the next?ig...needs the same fertilizer or whatever?

Soilman

What I am saying is that different states run different analysis on the soil. A soil from Texas would be more likely to have a salt or sodium problem than a soil from MN, so a TX lab may routinely run tests they would not run in MN. There are also regional differences in how labs do pH analysis, lime calculations, and P/K extraction solutions. In WI, all soil labs use Bray-1 to extract P and K. No other state uses Bray-K, and Bray would be a poor choice to extract P in a high pH soil. States that tend to have high pH soils would have labs that use Olsen-P or Mehlich3-P for more worthwhile results.

Soils are different based on climate, plant life/human use, landscape position, parent material, and time. There can be significant differences in soils, even in the same 20 acre field (usually from landscape position differences). That is why precision farming, taking soil samples by GPS coordinates, and variable rate application of lime and fertilizer are becoming more common. The methods to test these soils would be similar, but the lime and fertilizer recs could be greatly different (that is why a soil test is taken).

halfbakedi420

i guess what im getting at is..is the soil basically the same.... lets say..100 miles apart?

Soilman

If the soil 100 miles apart is at about the same elevation and landscape position, gets the same amount of rain, has/had the same type of vegetation, and was from the same/similar parent material (glacier/rock/volcanic ash), it would be basically the same soil. That said, it still could have a different lime and fertilizer rec. Otherwise, soils 100 ft apart can be greatly different (wet swamp vs well drained uplands soil).

Here is a link to the USDA soil survey. It can be interesting to see the different soil names you may have on your preoperty, and some of their characteristics. http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm