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Hi, I’m Danny Lauderdale with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service in
Pitt County and today we’re going to talk about soil testing. First of all, why do we
soil sample? We want to make sure the plants have the correct soil pH, and the right
nutrients in the soil to be able to grow and be as healthy as possible. Soil testing or
soil sampling supplies can be found in North Carolina at all offices of North Carolina
Cooperative Extension across the state. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and
Consumer Services is the organization in North Carolina that actually does the
analysis of the samples at their soil testing lab in Raleigh. How to soil sample is really
very simple. The main thing you need is stainless steel tools such as a hand trowel
or a soil probe and a plastic bucket. Go out to your growing area, collect twenty
subsamples from that area, that will all be mixed together. If it’s a tillable area,
then you are going to collect those from zero to eight inches deep. If it’s a no till
area or a lawn and landscape you are going to
collect those from zero to four inches deep. Then mix those 20 subsamples together to get
an average of what’s going on in the soil in that area
and you will put it in a soil sample box, fill it to the line, include your
name and address. Next you will take the soil sample form, most of us do a routine
analysis, you will include the number of samples you are submitting, and the county
that you are from. Your name, address, telephone number and email address is also
important on the form, as is a sample identification number that you put so you
know what each different sample is that you are taking. Also you include a crop code for
each different type of crop or type of plant that you are growing. Next you are going to
either drop that off at the Cooperative Extension office either here in Pitt County
or another county, or you can mail it straight to the North Carolina Department
of Agriculture and Consumer Services lab in Raleigh.
And as always, if you have more information needed, you can contact the Pitt
County Cooperative Extension office at 252-902-1709.