Soil Testing - where & how

11 years ago

I live in SE Minnesota. We have a new construction home, the sod was put down in June 2015. There is a bit of decent topsoil (4-6") over engineered fill (sand looking to me). That year I had two applications of Scott's. At the beginning of May 2016, I applied Milorganite. We've had a good rain since then.

I'd like to get the soil tested, but have some questions:
(1) is it too early for this newer lawn
(2) will the test results be skewed by a recent application ... should I wait a bit?
(3) who do you recommend for testing ... I saw on another post about "Logan Labs" and it looks like they have standard, saturate and complete package. Who have people used, what type of tests did they buy and who helps read results and suggest what to do?

Thanks
Tom

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Comments (3)

User
11 years ago
1) In what sense? A June 2014 (I'm guessing 2015 above was a typo for last year) should be rooted in and looking decent by now. Fully developed, however, no.

2) Nope, you're fine.

3) The $25 standard test is usually more than sufficient.
tomgio thanked User
dchall_san_antonio
11 years ago
Logan Labs was arrived at after doing at least a little research into methods used at the various soil testing labs and then comparing results for consistency and apparent accuracy. As I recall (help me here, morph), Logan Labs was a clear winner with UMASS coming in second. The rest of the soil test labs were pretty much rejected for not giving complete results or not being able to give the same results on two soil samples from the same yard.
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User
11 years ago
Exactly. Logan did the most consistent job for the best price with the best overall report. I'm certainly not displeased to read a UMass report, they're fine, we should note.

Most other tests are missing pieces of information critical for interpretation (lacking an EC or saturation percentages, for instance, is a critical miss). Or they're too inconsistent, or the price is well out of line.