To find out more about the chemistry of your soil, it is useful to sample your soil and send it to an expert laboratory. Many of the nutrient levels in the soil will change with time, and ongoing monitoring is recommended to assist with maintaining adequate soil fertility. Excellent guidelines for sampling soils are provided on the Soil Health Knowledge Bank.
The most important things to remember are to establish a monitoring program that suits your soil and your farming system, and to think about what soil depths are relevant to the particular soil chemistry you are interested in. In many soils in the South East it is important to take soil samples from more than the standard 0-10cm in order to get a fuller picture of plant available nutrients and soil health.
An easy rule of thumb is to take samples from 0-10cm, with judicious sampling to greater depths such as 10-20cm and 20-30cm where soluble nutrients or pH may be impacting on plant growth.
Click here for the Soil Testing Fact Sheet