Providing soil testing as a part of your services is not only a best practice, but it can significantly separate your business from your competition.
In designing your business plans, you look for ways to differentiate yourself from your competition and earn higher profit margins. Once you start to break down all of the benefits of soil testing it is hard to understand why every landscape professional doesn’t make this a critical part of their service offering.
As a landscape professional many of your product and services revolve around installing and maintaining beautiful and healthy plant material, whether that is grass or every type of plant on the landscape. The soil on each of your job sites play an extremely critical in how well your landscape installation will perform, and play a key role in determining your on going maintenance programs.
At the most basic level a soil test measures the soil’s pH level. Different plants have different nutrient needs, and how well each plant can access each of the nutrients is determined by the soil’s pH level. At the bottom of this article are a number of resources to help educate yourself on soils and soil testing.
The property owner’s who are your clients will need to be informed on the most basic level of why you are performing a soil test – and why you will in the future run more soil tests. Soil tests should be a part of your presentations. By working with your local suppliers who have strong agronomic knowledge and knowledge of your local area, you will be able to develop a maintenance program that will make your properties shine. You should be able to lower your overall fertilization programs by applying only the nutrients that are needed.
There are a number of different facilities located across the country that can help you with soil testing. A great to place to start your research is through your county extension offices like this one at Purdue University.
How and why soil and water testing is important
- University of Florida Soil Testing – Soil Testing
- University of Georgia Athens Agricultural and Environmental Service Laboratories – Agricultural and Environmental Service Laboratories
- NPK Fertilizer Calculator University of Georgia Athens – Awesome fertilizer calculator
- University of Georgia Soil Testing – Start EMBED <iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/124338742″ width=”500″ height=”282″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
- Michigan State University Extension Soil Testing Home
- How to get a soil test – Michigan State University Extension
- Making the most of your soil test – Michigan State University Tip Sheet
- Penn State University Soil Fertility Testing – Soil Fertility Testing
- Penn State University Irrigation Water for Turfgrass
- List of Certified Soil Testing Laboratories – Purdue University Agronomy Extension Agronomic Soil Testing Laboratories Participating in the North American Proficiency Testing Program (NAPT, Coordinated by the American Society of Agronomy) Covers Indiana Illinois Michigan Ohio
- University of Massachusetts Amherst – Soil Testing Lab
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- Adjust Soil pH – University of Massachusetts Amherst –
- Interpreting Your Soil Analysis – University of Massachusetts Amherst.
- Wallace Labs Soil Testing Offers Multiple Advantages – An informative article by Wallace Labs located in Southern CA. For educational purposes only. No endorsement of criticism is implied. For informational purposes only.
- Wallace Labs Water Testing Overview – An informative article by Wallace Labs located in Southern CA. For educational purposes only. No endorsement or criticism is implied. For informational purposes only.
- Wallace Labs Plant Tissue Testing Overview – An informative article by Wallace Labs located in Southern CA. For educational purposes only. No endorsement or criticism is implied. For informational purposes only.