Soil Testing

Minerals are very important to the overall health of plants and animals. Most of you probably know that the food grown today is not as mineral or vitamin rich as the food grown just a few decades ago. This is partly due to the overuse of chemical fertilizers which throw the soil micro-organisms out of whack. It may also be due to the way we farm now. If you ever hear the term no- till farming used in large-scale farming operations, it's not a good thing. This means they are using herbicides and insecticides to do what the tractor and tilling used to do, that is get rid of weeds. This is the whole idea behind Monsanto's Round Up ready franken-seeds. They can survive the toxic onslaught. I mention this only because coming from a permaculture perspective as I do, I initially thought oh! no-till = good. Yeah, not good.

Ok back to minerals. So a person like myself who has a whole lot of land needs to know what is going on underneath her feet. Why? Well if you have animals who are eating the plants that grow out of your soil and it is severely lacking in important minerals these deficiencies will show up in the health of the animal or in you. So you need a soil test to give you the low down on the down low.

You ideally take a small sample (say 1/2" wide and 1"deep) of soil from at least 10-20 different areas of the land and put them all together in a container. Then you mix ,seal and send off to the lab. Make sure the samples are not too wet. You also need to indicate what type of testing you would like done. Basic Soil Analysis with recommendations and a graph is good. Just make sure they cover all the macro-minerals and the micro ones too. We are using A&L Western Laboratories from Modesto Ca and it costs $37. They were recommended by a natural grower near Oroville. Once I get the results back I will post what they say about our soils and what their recommendations are. In Pat Coleby's book Natural Goat Care she asserts the absolute primacy of people getting their soils tested if you really want to improve pastures and upgrade animal health. Even if you don't have lots of land or animals, it's a good idea to do a soil test on the soil you grow food on.