Soil plays a very huge role in farming and that's why all farmers should know the kind of soil they have and learn to bring the best out of it.
Ever had frustrations on which crop to plant on your farm? Wonder no more!
Did u know that within soil there are a complex of reactions happening. There are certain factors such as soil aeration, structure, texture. Cation exchange Capacity, pH, etc that determine the ability of the soil to be a suitable substrate for each particular crop/ plant you want to plant to flourish well.
Nutrient accumulation in each soil determines the well being of each crop as we spoke of the importance of NPK in the previous post.
But if in your soil there isn't enough of a certain macro nutrient the crops will have defficiency symptoms showing the lack of each nutrient resulting in poor growth of your plants.
Soil analysis is really helpfull and it is more of a necessity, you can determine the type of nutrient accumulation in your soil in order to determine which crop to plant " isn't that too nice? "
Yes,a lot of farmers complain about the price tags of having soil analysis done by the lab while others complain that the labs are either too full or too far.
Here's a DIY that will cost you nothing.
How to sample soil in your farm
What you need.
*spade
*bucket (preferably 5-10 kg)
*Hoe
*plastic bags preferably 1kg - 5kg
*Soil analysis Lab.
What to do:
Firstly you need to sub- sample top soil that is the from 0cm to 30cm. Sub-sampling is when you take soil samples from different locations in the farm when you done sub-sampling mix all samples in the bucket and place it in the plastic bags where each lab has their own requirements on the quantity of soil needed for the analysis .
The process at the lab will take from two weeks to a month depending on the busyness of the lab.
N:B use clean containers and implements to prevent contamination of your soil samples.
We had a lot of fun while doing this and we hope that you will also enjoy as much as we did or even more.
Good luck!
