Testing the Soil

First, I have to say is SORRY. This post is way late and I am sorry. Now, on to the reason for this post. I received a new soil tester in the mail some time in February and had the chance to finally use it at my work where I have the ability to grow things in a controlled greenhouse. I have to say the tester put a huge smile on my face. Watching the readings for moisture and pH bounce and differ between the pots of straw flower was awesome. I didn’t use the light portion of the tester because of the massive amount of light in the greenhouse at noon even greenhouse I am taking a greenhouse operations class to hone my skills in my backyard greenhouse. One of the assignments we have is to grow a crop of flowers from seed to flower in 12 weeks. I have not been completely dedicated to watering so some plants have suffered. The picture to the left is in a container which had not been watered for a week. It was a container in which I had previously moved the plants into larger pots but I was still curious what the tester would do. As you can see the black switch at the bottom of the tester is set to moist. (Sorry the picture is a little blurry). If you look at the readings you can see the dry marked with the red line the green line in the middle and the wet marked with the blue line. On the other side of the tester, the plants that I had watered before inserting the tester you can see the needle is on the border of wet. Watching the difference when I inserted the testing rods into the different containers sent the horticulture geek in me jumping “look, look, check this thing out!” With my experience in a retail greenhouse for 7 years I learned the soil here in East Idaho is pretty alkaline. With most of it being a clay base. As you can see in the readings on the tester our greenhouse soil is borderline 7 leaning to the alkaline side of the tester. The readings hadn’t been what I thought they might be, more to the middle of the 5-6 range on the tester. It made sense that changing the pH between the soil in the container and in the soil outside could possibly shock the flowers causing them to not be as large and captivating during the summer.

I was very happy playing with the Three-Way Tester. I cannot wait for the weather to warm up a bit and be able to take the tester outside into the beds. The other really useful thing this tester would be great for is indoor plants. I have an orange tree that I am growing which this tester would be great to check the moisture level on a regular basis. I can think of a few different, very useful, ways that the THREE-WAY TESTER would be very helpful in managing plants around a home, garden and greenhouse. I can’t wait for the weather to warm up.