{"id":1047,"date":"2020-08-17T08:49:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T12:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.seagrant.w3.uvm.edu\/2020\/08\/17\/mo-monday-its-time-to-test-the-soil\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:49:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:49:21","slug":"mo-monday-its-time-to-test-the-soil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/2020\/08\/17\/mo-monday-its-time-to-test-the-soil\/","title":{"rendered":"Mo Monday: It’s Time to Test the Soil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhile Mo is great, and saves us a lot of time, my husband and I, as new homeowners, soon realized that\u00a0lush green grass isn\u2019t guaranteed with only regular mowing and that other factors can impact grass health. In our case, creeping Charlie, or ground ivy, crept in rather handily to one area of our lawn, and another area was damaged during a yard project. Since weeds can take over when a lawn is not healthy (which we suspected as a possible reason that creeping Charlie was able to be so successful where it had come in) and to best prepare to re-establish the lawn in the damaged area, we knew that it was important to understand characteristics of our soil. This is true for anyone who wants to maintain a healthy lawn. Understanding the health of your soil can inform actions you take to keep your grass healthy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\n
\n
\n
\n\"trowels,
\n\n<\/picture>Here in the Lake Champlain basin, the\u00a0University of Vermont (UVM)\u00a0Agricultural and Environmental Testing Laboratory<\/a>\u00a0is a valuable resource to guide landowners through the soil sampling process\u00a0and to analyze the sample once it is collected. They provide step-by-step guidance on\u00a0how to collect a soil sample<\/a>. For those without a soil probe, like us, you can sample using a trowel or shovel. I found it easiest to use two.<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir guidance explains that it is very important to sample from at least 10 locations in your yard (collected in a zig-zag pattern) and to combine those samples into one for analysis.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo sample, initially, push the trowel into the ground to a depth of about 4-6 inches, creating a triangle shape of ground to remove from the lawn. Set this aside, so you can later replace it to hide the location where you collected the soil sample.<\/p>\n

\n\tNext, re-insert the trowel into the open hole, cutting out a 1\/2-inch\u00a0sliver of soil from one of the edges. Then cut away the edges of that sample, leaving about a 1-inch mid-section of soil.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdd that sample to the container into which you are collecting samples.<\/p>\n

\n\t\n
\n
\n
\n\"soil
\n\n<\/picture>Replace the triangle-shaped piece, and move to the next location to collect a sample.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter you add the triangle piece back to the lawn, the spot from which you sampled is completely hidden.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter you have collected the 10 samples, mix all of the soil in the container to create a uniform mixture.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdd this to your sample bag, complete the\u00a0form that you can download from the lab\u2019s website<\/a>, and send the sample and payment to the lab. You can expect results in a few weeks (accounting for shipping time for your sample to reach them).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe results come with easy to understand guidance on how to interpret them, including recommendations on how much and which nutrients to apply based on your results.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe learned some useful information and good lessons as we collected the soil samples and took action to re-establish our lawn in the two troubled areas. These include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n\t\tSampling the soil with the trowel was not\u00a0easy in our very clayey soil (which was sometimes overlaid with small rocks spilled there during the yard project). As a result, we may not have sampled quite deep enough. In the future, we will borrow or buy a soil probe to simplify the sampling process.<\/li>\n
  2. \n\t\tIn Vermont and New York, fertilizers with phosphorus can only be used on lawns if a soil test confirms phosphorus is needed or when establishing a new lawn. You can learn more about these regulations and the reason why the simple message to remember is \u201cDon\u2019t P on your lawn\u201d at the\u00a0Lawn to Lake website<\/a>. Since general fertilizing of lawn is recommended for early fall (and not during other times of the year), August is a great time to sample soil in preparation for fertilizing as is needed.<\/li>\n
  3. \n\t\tThe creeping Charlie in our yard was effectively killed by laying a large tarp on the infested area from early August through the winter until late April\/early May. At that point, we removed the tarp, turned over the soil with a shovel, removed dead plant material that remained, fertilized (following guidance for establishing a new lawn), and re-seeded the area. We compacted it just by walking on it due to COVID business closures and inability to rent a roller.<\/li>\n
  4. \n\t\tTo establish a new lawn, daily watering is critical. In the area that had been damaged during the yard work, we watered, but not as consistently as we might have. That resulted in numerous weeds sneaking in, which then had to be dealt with later.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \n\tIn the area that had the creeping Charlie, we were very consistent in daily watering this spring and the grass thrived. (Note: creeping Charlie has since developed in a ~10-inch\u00a0strip along one edge where the tarp didn\u2019t quite cover. The plan is to place a tarp there to kill it in the next few weeks, and re-seed the area next spring.)<\/p>\n

    \n\tRead more Mo Monday blogs on Kris Stepenuck’s blog page.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    While Mo is great, and saves us a lot of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}