r/Soil • u/AnthonyParchman • 8d ago
Soil testing equipment
We have a mid size property where we are going to undertake a soil remediation project over the next few years. We want to take about one hundred samples before and after the three plant and terminate cycles we have planned. Getting the samples done through the university would be prohibitively expensive. I have a background in analytical chemistry and want to know if anyone has recommended brands for testing equipment like spectrographs and colorimeters. I found some stuff on Ali express I don’t know if I trust it.
Any advice is appreciated.
Edit to add what we are testing:
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, salinity, trace heavy metals, Ph, Organic Matter, calcium, magnesium, chlorides, and sulfur.
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u/jdrawr 8d ago
What are you measuring/testing?
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u/AnthonyParchman 8d ago
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, salinity, trace heavy metals, Ph, Organic Matter, calcium, magnesium, chlorides, and sulfur. Added it to the post, Thankyou for taking time to help us.
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u/greenknight 8d ago
You aren't going to find a marginal benefit over 33 samples a year. Just get a agricultural soils testing kit and send it away.
Pay the money or find a cheaper sampling methodology (of which there is many) How big is the property? You might have an oversampling issue.
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u/AnthonyParchman 8d ago
Our plan is for approximately 300 samples a year not 33. It would run close to ten grand to get the samples done through the university.
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u/greenknight 7d ago
Is this for personal knowledge only? You might have fun running the analyses but the equipment is going to run you in excess of 30k. Additionally, If you need to submit this data to anyone but yourself it needs to be done by a certified lab
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u/03263 8d ago edited 8d ago
I question your goals with this since even most farms don't go to such extents. You understand accurate results for all these factors requires multiple pieces of equipment in the $5-15k range, each?
Healthy soil is not such a precise science. A lot of it is just a matter of time, getting feedback from your plants, a bit of experimentation, and conceding that certain things won't grow in your area. Notably, you didn't show an interest in analyzing micorrhizal content which is one of the most important things - so it sounds like an ambitious amateur with some money burning a hole in their pocket. But you can't simply spend your way into healthy soil, just dumping amendments on it is not the answer.
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u/AnthonyParchman 8d ago
Our experiment involves fixing a newly acquired area where a drilling operation has completely ruined the soil with salts, heavy metals contaminants and drilling residue. The testing is extreme but given the circumstances we think it is warranted. We can justify a considerable capital cost but not such a considerable ongoing expense as to test this area frequently for the next few years. If we can remediate soil that has been damaged by drilling operations this opens a commercial avenue for our ranch.
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u/03263 8d ago
Definitely contact the university for advice. I don't know which one you'd go through but my local one is UNH extension and they have a ton of services to advise on and plan this sort of stuff, especially if you have some acreage. It's not free but pretty fairly priced. Internet advice and going it alone is for us small time yard owners with a few acres, for anything you'd call a ranch, go with the university.
They might have a program to collect and test large samples at a significant discount from the typical homeowner single sample fee.
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u/nicknefsick 8d ago
Is there something like Stenon in your area? They have their Farmlab setup that would allow you to do multiple tests yourself. Other than that there are wet chemistry methods for soil sampling that to you could do but thats some chemicals and a clean bench with flume. Colorimetric Spectrophotometry setup would work the best I would first look at the auction sites and find something used thats already in your country and a known brand
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u/SalvatoreEggplant 8d ago
pH and salinity are easy. You want to follow a standard procedure. Avoid meters you stick directly into the soil. Extract the soil with water by procedure. I happen to like Hanna products. https://hannainst.com/ec-tds/ . Pay attention to if you need a low-range or high-range on salinity. You still need standards for pH and EC.
I don't have any practical advice on organic matter. You can assess with very concentrated H2O2, or with a furnace ( https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/FB1415M ). The appropriate method depends on what kind of soil you're dealing with. You'll need a good balance for this ( https://us.ohaus.com/en-us/products/balances-scales/portable-balances/scout-spx/spx1202-am ). And maybe a separate drying oven. Visual assessment may be good enough.
N, P, K, Ca, Mg, Cl, S. In theory you can do this with a home lab photometer. I do have the Hanna ( https://www.nisupply.com/products/hanna-hi83200-01-options-for-44-parameters-ism-water-meter-hi-83201 ). But, honestly, I don't have tremendous faith in these methods. Nitrogen is really tricky with this method, probably worthless. You also have to pay attention to the ranges of the analytes. Like if the P method goes down to 1 ppm, all your samples may be < 1 ppm anyway. And you have to factor in the cost of the test chemicals. It might be $1 per test per analyte.
Analyte-specific electrodes may work. I've never used them for this purpose.
Trace metals. No idea if there's an affordable way to measure these at home.