Building Your Dream Apartment

Building Your Dream Apartment

How to Approach Soil Testing As a New Landowner

Julian Caldwell

If you have recently become a new landowner you need to understand exactly what you have just bought, in terms of the potential of your new asset. You need to know if you have a productive pasture, or what your growing yield may be. In short, you need to do some soil testing. What should you know about this?

Strategising

Testing is crucial in order to determine the capability of the specific soil type you have. Once you have this information you will be able to plan properly to make the best use on a daily basis. The decisions you make from a managerial perspective in terms of landscaping will impact the results you obtain. You will also be able to put in place specific strategies for certain types of planted crops.

Careful Planning Necessary

In order to get this under way, you should divide up the property into targeted fields or paddocks and then decide to do some spot testing. You can also opt to test individual fields once per year. You have to be careful to plan this properly, though, as costs can be somewhat prohibitive if not careful. This is why most people do not do fully comprehensive testing regularly. You should certainly consider doing specific tests before it comes time to sow crops, and also focus on specific crops that are yielding productively. By monitoring and testing the soil in that particular area you will be to maintain your high level of performance, and potentially replicate the environment elsewhere on your land.

Being Representative

Before you start, talk to a qualified agronomist or laboratory in order to determine where you should retrieve samples from, how deep you should dig and how much in terms of volume you should collect. Just make sure that you are being representative and not taking your sample in, for example, a shaded area where the bulk of the paddock normally enjoys full sun.

Specific Approaches to Remember

Remember also to avoid highly trafficked areas near to gates or feeding troughs and also try and avoid areas which are particularly damp, such as close to streams. Remember that near to feeding troughs nutrients from the livestock feed may permeate into the soil and throw off your results. Also, for consistency, ensure that you always retrieve your samples at the same place. To enable this, use a GPS device to record positioning.

Once you have your results you will be able to talk with the laboratory and come up with a plan to help you make the best of the soil in your specific location. Remember that different regions of the country can face specific soil challenges, and the laboratory can help you determine how the soil in your area might respond to particular fertilisation.


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About Me
Building Your Dream Apartment

Hi! My name is Robert. I live in Brisbane with my wife and our two kids. For many years, I have been saving up money so I could build our dream home. I first saw my dream home when I was aged 21. I was on a holiday to the USA and was staying with friends in California. While down on the beach one day, I spotted a lovely mansion house which was high up on the cliffs. I decided that one day, I would like a house like that. Last year, I instructed a team on house builders to begin construction of our new home and I couldn't be happier. I have learnt so much from the experience, I decided to start this blog.