With plans of starting a crop next year, we need to get to know the soil a little better first. Finding out its current nutrient levels and PH is key to making sure the crop we want to grow (hardneck garlic) thrives. Interestingly the kind of garlic we plan on growing can handle a more alkaline PH than most plants. And as a method of weed control, we can possibly boost the alkalinity to make the garlic happy but other native weeds not so happy about growing there.
With all of this thought aside, we get to testing. We pick the spot were we plan on starting an acre of garlic. I drive over there with my tools in hand. A probe and collection tube.
This dirt will tell us all about the conditions for the garlic to grow in. We will test it for its PH, nitrogen, phosphorus and potash. We can follow up with more tests, but getting the NPK and PH is a good start.
We go deep to get a true sample of the soil below. And then we will pull the dirt out for collection.
With the dirt pulled out we can put it in its tube.
I will soak this dirt in distilled water for a few hours, but first we must pull out any little rocks or plant material before soaking.
With the soil soaked for many hours all of the dirt has settled. Now we can test.
My Rapid test will give me instant results, soon we will see where the soil is at levels wise.
I use two methods for PH, a strip and reagent.
PH looks the same between the two tests.. at a 6 that is pretty good for most plants in general. But we can boost it up to an 8 for garlic.
The results all lined up, we are looking pretty bad.. There fields have probably never been fertilized.. Or if so a long time ago and its all gone now. Everything shows depleted except for the potash. From what I have read the clay here is rich in it so good to see one of the nutrients is good. Well there is a lot of room for improvement.
So what’s next?
We need to get more nitrogen and phosphorus into the soil and get the soil more alkaline. My wood ash I have been collecting from the wood furnace will work well to add more phosphorus and will also raise the alkalinity of the soil.
Will post about how I do that soon, but for now its good to know the current state of the fields. Now they need some work.