Your thoughts on DIY soils test kits?
Contributors to this thread:Whitetail Deer
From: standswittaknife
21-Dec-19
Anyone have thoughts on this? Recommendations or just take to extension offices?
From: t-roy
21-Dec-19
For no more than it costs, ($10-$20 per sample) I would recommend just sending your samples in to have them tested. The labs have all of the necessary equipment to give you very accurate assessments vs the home kits.
From: standswittaknife
21-Dec-19
Sounds good..
From: Ambush
21-Dec-19
I bought one of the prong style testers. We don’t have an ag centre here because we don’t have any real ag. crops
I stuck it in a couple dozen places in my tiny plot and got a 6.8 average I think. Nothing other than bush has ever grown there. But my food plot generally sucks, so maybe that’s a vote against home testing.
From: Stressless
21-Dec-19
Not worth the time especially the WTI scam. Get good samples (lots of YouTuber's out there doing that. Send of to the county or state AG testing.
From: Stressless
04-Jan-20
THEY.ARE.CRAP. it's a scam as mentioned above, specifically the WTI. I tried them, pitiful.
Get a good sample, many good instructions out there, take to your local AG and actually setup a meeting and talk to an agronomist on staff about the results of your sample and what your goals are.
From: Steve Leffler
04-Jan-20
Ok. I’ll ask. What is wrong with the WTI sample that you send to them? I did it a couple years ago and it seemed like I got accurate results emailed back quickly. What am I missing?
From: Buffalo1
05-Jan-20
I have used them to test soil and retained my reading. I then sent my tested samples to state testing facility. Have found them to be pretty accurate finding of the DIY sample to be very close to the findings of the state facility. . I bought my test unit at a local plant and garden store who recommended to unit as a quality test device.
I guess like anything else, you get what you pay for.
From: drycreek
05-Jan-20
On another forum I read that someone sent soil samples from the same plot to three different facilities and got three different results. May turn out to be like the deer aging “science”, which turns out not to be very accurate at all. I’ve always used WTI but what do I know ?
From: tobywon
05-Jan-20
I can see that happening drycreek If they took 3 individual soil samples. Soil is not homogenous like a water sample would be. There could be differences even inches apart. If they took 3 individual samples and mixed them together and spilt the samples between the 3 different facilities then that in theory should yield close results.
From: drycreek
05-Jan-20
tobywon, supposedly that’s what they did. I can tell you that when I take samples I don’t get nearly as many samples out of one plot as they recommend. I’m not farming though, I’m food plotting, and my livelihood doesn’t depend on those tests. My success is measured by what I see when my plots grow.....or not. Mostly I’m satisfied, but I still have a couple that make me scratch my head.
