The Penn State Agricultural Extension is conveniently located in the same building where I work, and a few weeks back I stopped in to see what services they offer for the backyard gardener. One service I wanted to check out was the soil testing. It's something I wanted to do at the barn but never got around to it. Now that I've seen the results, I wanted to share what the process is and what you get for the $9 fee.
The office is located on the third floor of the Government Services Center in West Chester. It seems they offer a number of services, and even a number of different soil testing depending on what you're growing and what capacity - for example a backyard vegetable garden like myself, or acres of pasture, or even commercial farming.
After paying the fee you get the kit in the picture above. It consists of a small soil sample bag, some forms to fill out to indicate what type of analysis you are requesting, and a plastic envelope to mail the sample. There are direction as to where the samples should be taken from - how deep and at what interval. You then take the soil and dry it out over night.
The results arrived in about a week or so- the below pictures are what the report comes back as. I was surprised at the level of detail and the interpretation gave meaning to what . It was nice to have specific and personalized actionable information. I was expecting a list of numbers about pH and phosphate levels that I would have to spend time googleing their meaning and then come up with solutions.
Take a look at my results. There are a number of key ares that need improvement. Luckily this is just my base soil. With building the raised beds I was able to bring in optimized gardening soil for the top 10-11 inches. One $30 load of soil from a local mulching business got me 2/3 of the beds filled. Enough for the time being to get started, although another load will be needed before the first week of May. Thanks to a good neighbor I was able to get around the delivery fee.
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