You can get a high-powered one at a doper-hydroponic store, but they are over $70. A better bet for occasional use, is an $8 liquid tester, coffee filters and a bottle of distilled water.

Metal probe type pH testers might be sensitive to recent fertilizer applications, so the pH reading could be off a little. However, many gardeners are using these successfully. The pH meter with a glass bulb, and an internal battery, that would be recognized by someone who works in a chemistry lab, will run at least 50 dollars, and they must be calibrated with a known pH standard solution before use. Dye indicators are reliable, but they don't give precise readings. The best I can do with bromocresol green is plus or minus 0.2 unit. So if I test the soil around our blueberry shrubs, and it looks like the pH is around 4.8, the actual value might be 4.6, 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, or 5.0. This is close enough for growing blueberries, but not close enough for a soil testing lab. If your ten dollar kit uses dye indicators, it should give results similar to what I am getting.

The tester I have requires me to collect a small (and I mean small, like the size of a blueberry) amount of soil, add distilled water, then a tablet, shake, then wait for the color change. It just seems hard to believe that a piece of soil the size of a blueberry could give accurate results.

RM

I have a $10 home depo special that works good but the trick is using a brillow pad to scrub the metal prongs after every time you stick it in to the soil, i mean every single time. If not the ph reading will keep rising if you try to use it more than once and not scrub it. I checked it against a expensive ph meter from my lab at work and its right on the money with the ph readings +/- .2

Which brand/model is your pH meter blueboy1977? I need to pick one up.

Today I bought a cheap "poke and hope" pH meter at the local hardware store and it came with a small brillow pad. I followed the instructions and cleaned it after each test being careful not to damage the bullet tip. It seems consistent and near as I can tell is working well. I tested all my blueberry plants, most were in the 5.5 to 6 range with a few over 6 which I will try to bring down a bit. The one I bought was a rapidtest...it was about $7.00.

RM

Riverman - a pea sized sample could be accurate as far as the chemistry is concerned but it isn't likely to be representative of the area sampled..... garbage in, garbage out. Any sample(s) taken should be thoroughly blended before analysis; in addition, one must take the samples in the crop in question's root zone. Unfortunately, people tend to focus on the way soils get analyzed while having no idea how to take a proper sample, both are very important to getting useful information from a soil test.

If you are uncertain about your test kit, take a thogoughly blenede sample big enough for your analysis, do your test and send the rest to a soils lab for comparison. If you really want to get picky, do the entire process 2 or 3 times. The lab's results are very likely to be correct.