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Warning: I spent 3 months grading my garden soil by feel and a $14 test kit in Boise proved me way off
For a long time I judged my soil by squeezing a clump in my fist and calling it good. If it held together, I figured it was fine, and I planted the same way for maybe 5 seasons without thinking twice. Then last spring my tomatoes in the raised beds came out small and the leaves kept going pale, so I finally bought a cheap test kit at the garden center on State Street. Turns out my pH was sitting around 5.3 the entire time, way too sour for what I was growing, and I had been dumping in peat moss for seasons which made it worse. Now I do a real test every spring and I keep a little notebook with the numbers so I can compare from one season to the next. The odd part is I always thought testing was a gimmick for people with fancy setups. Has anyone else had a cheap kit change how they feed their beds?
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amy97510d ago
Wow, the peat moss thing really got me because I heard the same warning on a garden podcast last year. They said peat drops your pH over time and most veggies want closer to 6.5, so folks were wrecking their beds without knowing it. I had no clue a $14 kit could catch that either, I always figured you needed a lab. That notebook idea is smart, comparing season to season seems way more useful than one test.
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