The Results are In

A small miracle happened last night - after many paper towel changes, our soil sample finally dried out. After a long and arduous day at work, Farmer B came home to find me in the kitchen giddy as a schoolgirl with a pile of dirt and a mess of test tubes and colored pellets. I was waiting for him to get home to begin the testing since he knew the hidden location of the distilled water in the garage. So instead of relaxing on the couch for the evening, Farmer B and I indulged in a romantic night of soil testing.

So the testing began. It involved spoons, measuring cups and a shot glass (don't ask - we improvised). Add water to line, drop in pellet, add soil, shake, repeat, etc. All very fancy stuff that reminded me why I got a C in High School Chemistry. After about 10 minutes of this nonsense our kitchen looked like a meth lab. There was a lot of shaking involved, but the funniest part of all? We only needed to use 2 teaspoons full of soil. Good thing we did all that digging, collecting, drying, removing of non-soil-bits, and squashing of bits larger than a pea. Two stinking teaspoons. Nice.

After all that we found out that our soil is much like us: confused. The pH (green tube) appears fine...maybe? The Nitrogen (red tube) appears low.The Phosphorus (blue tube) appears low. And the potassium (yellow tube) was too confusing to read, so we took that as a sign that it must be perfect. (You can click on the photo in this post to view it larger and see the results yourself).

So now we have the results...this changes nothing. We are still planning on planting next week in that very same confused soil.