My soil testing kit.
Last year I threw manure all over my allotment, stuck in the veggie plants and waited to see what would happen. This method was surprisingly successful, though it owed more to the resilience of the plants than to my innate skill.
Now that I'm becoming a 'proper' vegetable grower, I've decided to test the pH level of my soil. Thinking about it makes me slightly panicky - is this going to complicate life on my allotment? I like things to be simple - mostly because I'm lazy. So why do it at all? Well, it might explain why some cabbages grew large and others didn't, ditto the onions. On the other hand, it might not. But having seen a large tub of lime in the garden centre, I've been wondering if I need to use some.
Which bit of soil should I test? Will there be different pHs in different bits of the plot? What about areas I manured last spring and those I manured in the autumn? Already I can feel myself making this really complicated.......
And now I've read about testing for something called 'free calcium carbonate' -
think I'll just stick the veggie plants in...
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