Welcome to Read Your Soil
Whether you are new to growing crops or been doing it for years, and whether you are growing crops on a small or large scale, success depends on the fertility of your soil. Before you attempt to improve a soil, you first need to understand it. Read Your Soil aims to provide you with the tools needed to understand and improve your soil whether or not you have access to a soil testing laboratory.
Each soil is unique. Just as there is no universal medicine good for everyone, there is also no fertilizer good for all soils (except compost made from crops that soil grew). So how do we, as soil doctors, understand our patient, the soil? We could simply take a soil sample and have it analyzed by a soil testing laboratory. Then, we can submit the lab results to experts like Grow Your Soil (growyoursoil.org) that can interpret the lab results and make a custom recommendation to improve our soil organically and sustainably. But what if we don’t have access to a soil lab or a soil consultant?
That’s where we come in! Our approach is provide information and tools so that you can perform simple tests to better understand your soil and know specifically how to improve it. Our Read Your Soil app guides you through a number of tests, including soil quality tests, irrigation water tests, and observing and interpreting crop deficiency symptoms that you can select and perform. Then, you can enter your results, and when you are done, the app will create a custom organic fertilizer recommendation listing specific organic inputs and application rates to improve your specific soil. Once you create a free account (we do not use your information), the app works offline so you can use it in the field. The Read Your Soil app includes a large number of nutrient deficiency symptom images for a wide variety of common crops, so often you don’t need to plant specific crops but can simply observe the crops you are already growing to learn more about your soil.
In addition to the app, this website provide an ever-growing number of Soil Science Spotlights (blogs) to provide a good soil science foundation you can apply to gain a better understanding your soil, water and crops, regardless of your educational background. With this foundational knowledge and the handy app, we hope you have much success in better understanding your soil’s uniqueness, strengthening its particular weaknesses and maintaining its strengths.
Soil is A WOMB, comprised of the presence and interactions of Air, Water, Organic matter, Minerals and Biology. Read Your Soil can help you analyze each of these components and determine how best to improve your particular soil.
