Soil testing

[dfarms11]

When you guys soil test, where do you take it from? Do you pick one representative spot every year? Or just go around the whole field in different spots?

[mbratrud]

We Benchmark so go back to the same GPS coordinates every year.

[dfarms11]

Hi Mark, so then do you just pick one area? Or do you pick a few spots in a field, and just keep doing them all every time?

[mbratrud]

different spots in the fields ussually mid slopes and go back to the same spots every year.

[mbratrud]

We are on fairly level land and our midslopes are not that extreem.

[poorboy]

Do you try to avoid the seedrow or the band where your fertilizer was last year? It will skew your results greatly to the high side if you hit last years P and K fertilizer bands more often and show results lower than realistic if you try to avoid those bands.

Even in a year where the N is not all used, it may affect your results.

In my case, I mid row band, so the mid row is 2x as strong as a normal side banding knife because there are 1/2 as many of them. It greatly affects the soil test, and I am never sure how to handle these fields when sampling.