Absolutely. You've probably added soil and amendments but it would still be helpful to know some things. pH, of course as well as nutrient levels. You may need to add some paraticular nutrients or you may find, as Jay did, that you need to stop adding so much of something. In an attempt to counteract the acidity of our soil we added woodashes for several years. When the potatoes developed scab I suspected that we'd overdone it and the soil test confirmed it. No woodashes on the garden for several years after that. Now we put them on the asparagus which can take a lot especially over the heavy layer of acidic oak leaves.

First let me say I'm noit a good one to tell anyone to get a soil test. I went 15 years without one. I would recommend one now to see where you are at and if ok every 4-5 years or if you change practices. I had changed some of my practices and amounts of things I was using and didn't get a test. In KS for home gardens they will run 2 a year free I think. I know that it is different in every state. Sure Dawn or someone can tell you what OK charges or you can find out at their site I'm sure. Jay

First of all, and no disrespect to OSU's soil lab which I am sure is excellent (you can find them by googling Oklahoma State University Soil, Water and Forage Lab), but if I were having a soil test, I'd use the independent Texas soil lab Jay recently used. They are excellent and give you great recommendations that include natural products you can use to make any needed 'fixes'. Most university-affiliated labs tend to lean towards recommending chemical fixes although I do think that is slowly changing. I've linked that lab below.

Secondly, I think everyone should have their soil tested at least once every 5 years or so and that is especially true for less-experienced gardeners or for newly-built beds. Because I already know my soil tends to be incredibly low in naturally-occurring organic matter (it is mostly very dense red clay), and has a high pH, I amend with organic matter for two or three years and then have a soil test done to see what, if anything, is lacking. By that point, the soil is usually in pretty good shape and I only have to make minor adjustments.

Once you have been gardening a while, the appearance of certain diseases often will tell you that your soil has either a deficiency or an imbalance, as Dorothy noted above with potato scab. Also, once you've gardened a while, you'll learn how to diagnose some deficiencies either by the appearance/performance of some plants, or by the types of weeds that sprout. (Weeds can give us great clues about what our soil has too much of or lacks.) Once you know your soil that well, you generally can diagnose your soil issues yourself, unless something catastrophic like a wildfire or flood causes major damage to your garden. In that case, you would desperately need a soil test to help you get the garden soil back on track.

Some of the most important things a soil test tells you is your soil's pH (those store test kits you buy and use to do your own pH tests give unreliable results), percentage of organic matter and Cation Exchange Capacity. If you have a good pH, good levels of OM and a good CEC, your soil will need only minor tweaking. In fact, in those three factors are in good shape, you likely have pretty balanced soil. If you read Jay's results, you know that even though he had some high N-P-K numbers, he still gets great harvest results. I believe that's because so many of his other indicators are great.....good OM, good internal drainage, good CEC.

One of the things about organic matter in soil that is hard to understand at first is that organic matter needs to be added constantly and continually practically forever. Why? Consider all organic matter to be, essentially compost (or humus) even if it is only partially broken-down when you add it. Then, memorize this old gardening maxim: "Heat eats compost." To make it even worse, because we are in a high heat area with months of hot weather, our heat eats compost exceptionally quickly, meaning that the never-ending heat and humidity here cause our organic matter to break down amazingly quickly. You could add 12" (1" or 2" at a time since tillers don't go that deep) of organic matter to a garden and feel like your soil was set for life, but that wouldn't be true because in fewer years than you'd think, that organic matter would become almost completely depleted.

So, I add a lot of OM for the first 2 or 3 years of a new bed, and then count on my mulch to break down and feed the soil year-round. I actually am not a big fan of rototilling or plowing very often, preferring to do that type of soil disturbance early in a bed's life, but not forever after. Why? Every time you turn over the soil, you are altering its natural structure and you're introducing air and sunlight/heat into the subsurface soil which makes organic matter break down much more quickly than it otherwise would.

A soil test provides you with a 'snapshot' of your soil's makeup and health at any given time. It tells you what you already have, and then the accompanying recommendations tell you how to improve what you have. So, is it useful? Absolutely. But, it is equally proper to manage the soil well after the test so you don't cause your own OM to degrade too quickly. It is great to get good or great soil test results, but you can't just sit back and think your work is done because the soil is at work every day and it always will need some replenishment (though less and less over time).

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Plant and Soil Lab

Cultivating with a tiller as so many do also eats up OM as it increases the heat of the soil at the same time that it adds extra oxygen. Hence the superiority of keeping a mulch to suppress weeds, cool the soil, encourage earthworms. We have such a large garden that we don't have enough mulch to cover it all year a la Ruth Stout. But we never till to cultivate in the summer. Only once a year when we turn under compost and chicken litter. Then mulch in the summer and watch it disappear by fall, eaten up by heat, earthworms and microorganisms.