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Tips for fall soil sampling

A nutrient management specialist has some tips for farmers taking soil samples this fall.

Daniel Kaiser with the University of Minnesota says the first thing to focus on is testing at the right depths.

“For mobile nutrients, six inches.  If you’re doing a nitrate sample, we’re typically going to be looking at about a two-foot depth.  So you want to make sure to do as good of a job as you can to try to get down to those depths to make sure the data is accurate and it can be comparable to what most of the recommendation systems are based on.”

He tells Brownfield choosing the right sampling strategy also helps provide the most accurate picture of nutrient availability.

“When we start looking at it, (ask yourself) how much are you willing to invest in it?  What the spatial variability in a particular field (is).  Then looking at those to decide what the best strategy is.”

Other recommendations include sampling before fertilizer is applied but not too soon after harvesting the field.

Kaiser says growers can use the soil test data to identify where fertilizer makes the most sense economically.