We’ve listed the equipment you may need for the soil tests featured as a standard on Soilmentor. Note – most people don’t do all of these soil tests, and therefore you don’t need all of this equipment!
There is an individual equipment list on every soil test page, so you can see exactly what is needed for each test.
Things you likely already have on farm:
- Plastic bag
- Smartphone to record results
- Shallow dish
- Spade
- Bin bag / tray
- Stopwatch (on phone)
- Ruler / tape measure
- Hand lens (optional)
- Small bucket
- Gloves
- Fence post or soil probe
- Soil probe or soil sampler
- Dry cloth / kitchen roll
- Clipboard (to compress the sward for readings)
- Small rubber mallet
Optional: things to make or print:
- Quadrat usually 177cm pipe / rope (instructions here)
- Mustard water – pre-mixed (instructions here)
- VESS score chart (print it here)
- 150mm (6″) metal / plastic tube, with 85mm (3″) depth marked (instructions here)
- Water bottle with 450ml level marked (instructions as above)
Things you may want to source:
- Heavy Duty Garlic Crusher
- Water Squirt Bottle
- Compressed Sward Stick (order one on AHDB)
- Refractometer (Brix 0-32%)
- Rising Plate Meter (e.g Jenquip EC09 Plate Meter)
- Soil Penetrometer (dial)
- Penetrologger (digital penetrometer)
- Soil pH Pen (e.g Bluelab), and buffer solution (see below)
- pH 4.0 and pH 7.0 Buffer Solutions (for calibration)
- Sap pH Meter (Horiba B-711 AQUAtwin pH-11 Portable pH Meter)
- Distilled Water (for cleaning sap pH meter)
Please note we don’t have experience using all of these tools – some have been recommended to us!
