Test Your Soil With Plants [PDF]

For thousands of years, farmers were able to predict the agricultural value of land by observing the plants that grew on it. Now we rely on laboratories for chemical analysis of soils, but there are two main disadvantages to chemical analysis of soils. The first disadvantage is that the analysis reflects the soil’s conditions at only one point in time – when the soil sample was taken. This is not a problem for some soil nutrients that do not change too much over the course of a season or a year, but some soil nutrients and conditions can change dramatically over that period of time.

The second disadvantage is that many farmers throughout the world do not have access to or cannot afford the cost of laboratory analysis of their farm’s soil. The cost of shipping the soil sample to a distant lab can itself be prohibitory. In addition, unlike the United States and many other developed countries, developing countries have not surveyed and classified their agricultural lands on a scale that is small enough to indicate soil conditions on a particular farm. Therefore, there are a large number of farmers in the world who must attempt to manage their soil and maintain or improve its fertility with very limited knowledge about that soil. As a result, most land goes unfertilized or fertilized with the wrong nutrients, and the yield potentials of that soil are never realized, generation after generation.

Using plants to analyze the soil overcomes all of these disadvantages. First, plants describe the soil and climate that they are experiencing every moment they are alive. Need a soil test? Just go out to the farm and look at the plants! It is essentially as easy and self-reliant as that. Second, to observe the wild plants requires no planting, watering or weeding on your part, only observing. To observe crop plants requires only a little digging, planting and nurturing on your part. In most cases, these crop plants are simply plants that you already were planning on growing anyway, such as tomatoes, corn, potatoes and beets. Using plants to test the soil does require a little training (which the book provides) and practice, but does not require any expensive equipment, and none of the toxic chemicals used in the chemical analysis of soil. Testing the soil, especially with crop plants, is then possible for anyone regardless of their access to money or technology.