When and how is a soil analysis done?

This is how grandma determined the pH value

Our grandmothers, who were not yet able to resort to the service of a laboratory, had their own recipes to find out whether the soil was acidic, neutral or alkaline.

• Take two cups.
• Put distilled water and a packet of baking powder in one of them.
• Pour some vinegar into the other vessel.
• Now enter from your Garden soil a little in each cup.

If foam forms in the container with the vinegar, the soil is alkaline. If it hisses when you crumble the soil into the baking soda-water mixture, the substrate is acidic. If nothing happens, your garden soil is more neutral.

That way, you can at least tend to see what the soil is like.

Simple soil analysis using test sticks

If you would like to determine the soil values ​​yourself, you can use one of the test sets available from specialist retailers.

• First remove about 100 g of soil and place the soil in a sufficiently large, clean glass.
• Mix the substrate with 100 ml of distilled water.
• After resting for about 10 minutes, hold the litmus strip in the liquid.
• Based on the discoloration, you can read off the pH of the soil.

The professional soil analysis

You can have this carried out by some agricultural inspection and research institutes. The simple variant, which is usually sufficient for the hobby garden, costs around twenty euros. With this you can:

• the humus content,
• the pH value,
• the content of potassium, magnesium and phosphate

determine.

More complex analyzes, which cost from 50 EUR, also include the values ​​of nitrogen, various trace elements and any heavy metals contained in the soil.