Soil sampling procedure for baseline samples
Steven Vanek (draft 10 oct 2019)
Taking a sample of soil from each experiment site in the trial provides us a number of benefits:
- It allows farmers, through simple testing like pH or particulate organic matter (POM) to know more about their soil.
- It is a very important part of measuring any benefits coming from the practice as we must accurately compare the soil health status in a few years with the starting status.
- It allows us to understand the soil context of the trial: the soil type and soil health status to know in which types of soils a practice will provide benefits and in which soils not, in comparison to the farmer’s standard practice.
To measure these soil type and soil health properties, the following process has been designed for taking a sample:
- Often the trial will be a 10m x 10 m square, as designed. Sometimes it will be smaller or be in an irregular shape. The two pictures below illustrate these cases with suggested sampling points:
Figure 1. Typical trial layouts with suggested sampling points which will be mixed into a final sample. At left is a standard 4 square design.