What’s the Difference Between Lawn & Garden and Routine Soil Test Packages?

As the weather begins to warm up, people start getting antsy about their outdoor hobbies such as gardening and lawn care. Many home landscape enthusiasts start each growing season with a soil test. While anyone is welcome to send samples to us directly, many samples often come through our traditional agricultural clients as people want their samples shipped in by the company that they plan to buy fertilizer from. This situation frequently raises the question as to what is the difference between our Lawn & Garden packages and the routine packages used for agricultural samples?

As far as the laboratory processes being used, there is no difference. There are 2 options for Lawn & Garden packages, a basic and a complete package. The basic package is the same as our S1 package. The complete package is the same as our S2 and S3 packages. The difference is the level of fertilizer recommendations included. For Lawn & Gardens, the recommendations are given in pounds of nutrient per 100 and 1000 square feet and product specific recommendations are written by one of the ALGL staff agronomists, i.e. “Use 20 pounds of 21-0-0-24, ammonium sulfate, per 1000 square foot of garden.” These test packages are intended for homeowners who may not have knowledge of calculating fertilizer rates.

What many of our more traditional agricultural clients don’t realize is that we can provide the provide the same recommendations for lawns, gardens, flowers, etc. Using our routine test packages. The difference is that it only includes the calculated nutrient requirements, and not the product specific recommendations. This allows the retailer to choose the most appropriate fertilizer that they offer to meet their needs. When the products are being made by the lab agronomist, we often use very generic products so the homeowner has a better chance of finding them at a big box store or at a specialty garden store.

When using our routine soil test packages for lawn and garden type samples we will change the format to a graphical representation of the soil test ratings to help give the end customer a better understanding of the results. Below are examples of the different report formats.

Lawn and Garden report with product recommendations.