Don’t Forget the Lab as You Prepare for Fall Soil Sampling

While we are finishing family vacations, county fairs, and getting ready to send the kids back to school, it is also time to begin preparing for the fall soil sampling season. As you begin to layout your sampling strategy and processes, please keep the lab in mind.

• Contact the lab or your regional ALGL regional agronomist to update changes that need to be made to your lab account. Changes might include:
  • Email addresses to receive status notifications, PDF soil test reports, electronic data files
  • Changes in GIS software being used
  • If you are adopting Mehlich 3 data
  • Changes to from ppm and lbs/acre
  • Needed changes in report format
• Make a list of fields that are up for resampling. The annual soil sampling history reports on eDocs are helpful to help ensure you a not missing a resample field. If you are on a standard 2-year sampling cycle, look back to the 2021 report.
• Review the requirements for sampling dates on programs like H2Ohio. Some programs may have requirements that will require you to collect soil samples sooner than the normal sampling cycle.
• Contact the lab or your regional ALGL regional agronomist to order sampling supplies.
• Be sure to check the expiration date on UPS shipping labels you may have in inventory, if they are expired order new.
• If you are expecting an increase in sample numbers, contact the lab or your regional ALGL regional agronomist to discuss updates in volume discounts.

Planning makes the season go much better for everyone involved. If you find yourself rushed in season to get soil samples collected and then fertilizer recommendations complete, we encourage to you consider sampling a season in advance. For example. If the client spreads fertilizer in the fall, collect the soils sample in the spring so that the recommendations can be made outside of the soil sampling season.