Hi, I’m Ed Bruske. We’re showing you how to grow your own vegetable garden. Right now, we’re going to tell you a little bit about testing your soil and why that’s so important. Especially, if you’re gardening organically, plants depend on the soil for getting their food. A number of nutrients of five most important are nitrogen, phosphate, potassium, magnesium and calcium. And there’s no way that really know how much are those nutrients are in your soil without getting a professional test. And that means sending some of your soil to a professional laboratory. You can find out where those laboratories are in your area by contacting your local extension service. They should have a list that they can give you.
And what you do is collect soil from about four to six inches down. They make special tools for this but I just use a garden trowel and take some samples from various spots where you plan the garden, bag them up in a plastic bag like this and send them of to the laboratory. And there they’ll conduct some chemical analysis and they should send you back a report that tells you in detail what’s going on with your soil.
If your soil is a little short of organic matter, that’s pretty easy to fix. Just add some compose, either compose you make yourself or compose from the local garden center. The report should also tell you what the pH of your soil is. Now that refers to the level of the acidity or base in your soil and it's done on the scale of 1 to 14 with 1 being the most acidic soil and 14 being the most base.
Typically, areas in the east part of the country or wet parts of the country have more acidic soil while the western parts of the country and more dry areas have a more base type of soil. The laboratorial should give you instructions on how to fix that either by adding lime if your soil is too acid or how much or it or by adding sulfur and how much sulfur if your soil is too base.
Another reason to get your soil tested is to make sure it isn’t contaminated with lead. That would be initially particularly on urban areas where lead may have shed off of buildings and paint or some from gas fumes from busy road ways and entered your soil. It won’t leave your soil, it's always there. So it's good to have it tested particularly if you have children who might get it into their mouth and track it into the house.
Vegetables mostly do not take up lead but it can be a concern with leafy greens or with root vegetables so always make sure you’ve clean your root vegetables and peel them if you have any concerns about lead. For more information about lead and what the danger levels might be for you make sure you consult with your local extension agent.
Next, we’re going to talk about creating your garden beds.
