Little Badger wrote:

"sw" wrote in message
...
The instructions for the Tenax soil testing kit say that one should not
test soil pH in summer. We've been unable to think of a good reason for
this; can anyone suggest one, especially as regards compost straight out
of the bin, or should I disregard it?

I work for a laboratory that does soil pH!
We do them all year around so go a head!
Although we do them slightly different than just sticking a probe into the
wet soil!
We first dry the soil at 30deg C for 4 days; then grind it up into a powder;
then shake 20g of it in RO water for 20min. Then it gets tested against a
calibration curve with two points 4 pH and 9.2 pH!

Hope this helps.

Thanks, it does. I wonder why the manufacturer thinks summer is the
wrong time of year? FWIW the kit does require a dried soil sample
diluted with water, but they state that tap water is adequate. I've got
some distilled :-)

regards
sarah


--
Waist deep, neck deep
We'll be drowning before too long
We're neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damned fools keep yelling to push on