My soil test page still needs to be finalized and expanded upon.
In the mean time however, there are three soil tests that I can recommend from personal experience:
♦ Lab Soil Testing Kits by Rx Soil Soil RX gives accurate soil testing results just like all the other alternatives listed below however they also include Organic Matter % and CEC values in their results. If you want salinity readings they can accommodate that too just by asking for salinity on the label you mail in. The price is a little higher but those extra measurements make a big difference in the lawn. If you’ve got poor CEC or Organic Matter content then you know that aeration and top-dressings become far more important to the health of your lawn than just fertilizers or pH adjusters.
If you buy with Soil RX make sure to use coupon code “TURFMECH” to get an additional 10% off the purchase price.
♦ Lawnbright’s Soil Test Kit – This is a slightly cheaper version of the Rx Soil kit featured above. It’s not as comprehesnive of atest, you can’t get salinity levels checked either but the standard kit is cheaper and still provides accurate measurements of PH, CEC, and organic matter percentage.
► The Yard Mastery Soil Test – This soil probe is endorsed by the Lawn Care Nut himself, Allyn Hayne, and should be super simple to understand and use. The results come back with actual product recommendations that are specific to your results so you don’t really have to decipher the results if you don’t want to.
► The Sunday Lawn Subscription* – This subscriptions service comes with a free soil test and the ease of delivered products to you based on your specific address and geographic location.
Bonus: Sunday has offered Turf Mechanic readers and YouTube subscribers a chance to signup for a discounted rate if you use the promo code or discount code MECHANIC20. This coupon code applies to anyone signing up for a “Smart Lawn Care Plan”.
► The AgriTech Soil Test Kit – This is the primary product offered by soiltest.com and it’s one of the more affordable options available to regular homeowners.
If you are looking for something sold over on Amazon then there is only one I’ve tried – The Luster leaf Rapitest Kit. It is very inexpensive and you can do the whole thing at home by yourself… the caveat is that you only get to see your NPK & pH numbers instead of all the micros that the other tests will give you.
In the future I’ll add more comments to this page on each test kit and I will expand this list if I find any other test kits that I think are worth spending money on.