Understanding & maintaining the health of your soil will prove to be one of the most fundamental building blocks when working towards increasing your investments production. Whether you are growing your own feed or wanting to maximise your milk production or crop yield your soil health plays a vital role in making this happen.

We are equipped with vehicle mounted automatic probes to ensure core depth of 0-10 cm sample’s accuracy every time. There is no such thing as a “Calibrated Shovel” and we strongly recommend farmers should not collect their own soil samples. If samples aren’t collected correctly, with each core being exactly the same diameter and depth, there can be anywhere between 20-50% of errors in the result.

It is imperative that no fertiliser (other than Nitrogen) is applied for two months prior to samples being taken, and we recommend some kind of soil testing program be considered. Soil test results provide actual facts for farmers to work from, with no guess work involved.

Deep Nitrogen Testing

Deep Nitrogen testing is a soil sample taken at a depth of 0-60cm and the results are used to ascertain the amount of nitrogen available in the soil for plants to use.

Tissue Testing

A tissue test and a soil test are both recommended to be taken in underperforming plants. This is due to the plant potentially having absorbed and stored the available nutrients from the soil, therefore the tissue test may appear fine whereas the soil test shows the inadequacies.

In order to rectify the situation the results from both tests must be read in conjunction with each other. This then giving insight to the whole picture and why the plant is underperforming.

Like soil testing, tissue tests must be collected correctly to eliminate any potential error in results and therefore should always be carried out by someone with experience.