Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Oh My!

So we have two simultaneous big projects going on here chez Brave New Home. The first, of course, is the research stage of a giant (and gi-normously expensive) bathroom remodel. The second, is to make our front yard look less of an eyesore to our neighbors and get some curb appeal going. It's a huge task, involving reseeding the lawn (and actually getting the seeds to grow) and ripping out and replanting all our gardens. This then, is step one: testing the soil.

Rather than send our soil out for professional testing, we decided to try an at-home kit, for the impatient and cheap (it's not actually that expensive to send out soil, but there is some shipping and fees involved; a test kit only costs about $10 and is even better if it's free because your parents give you theirs).

So first we dug up a few samples from both sides of our front yard and mixed them in a bag. We only dug to about 3 inches because that's the depth that the grass roots go to. If we were testing the areas where we have shrubs and trees, we would have dug deeper. Then we laid them out on a towel, crunched up the bigger pieces, and left them to dry for the night.

The next day, we were ready to test. First up, ph levels. Mix one capful of soil into the test tube filled with water and a ph testing tablet (for anyone who grew up with pet fish, this is remarkably similar to testing their water ph).

Vigorously shake, then compare the resulting color. We assessed our soil at about 7.5 (both sides came out the same). We realized afterwards that we should have used distilled, filtered water, so to be safe, we checked our tap water ph level, which was about 6.5-7, so it wasn't anything too crazy that would impact our results.

Next we followed the instructions for testing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which all involved essentially the same concept (there was one more additive, but you get the idea). Here they all are (both sides tested about the same):

It's probably a little hard to see, but the results are that we are medium for phosphorus and potassium, but very low for nitrogen. Nothing too groundbreaking (pun intended...). But now we know when we pick out our fertilizer that we need one with more nitrogen than anything else, maybe a 15-5-5 blend (even more awesome: now we actually know what those numbers mean--the relative rations of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the fertilizer).

But for now these results are just "interesting" and don't really impact us much. You can't fertilize before you plant, because it's too harsh for new baby grass. So stay tuned for our next post for what happened next: thatching, composting, and seeding.