Your soil report arrives as a page of numbers. Each number changes what we put on your lawn. To get them, we pull small cores of soil from across the lawn, mix them in one bag and send the bag to a soil lab.
pH tells us how much iron the grass can use
The pH shows how acid or alkaline your soil is. Cache Valley soils are alkaline, and many lawns here read above 7.5. At that level, grass often cannot take up the iron in the soil and turns pale in July. A high reading is why we apply liquid iron to the leaf in June. We do not try to lower your pH. Our soils hold so much lime that the pH soon climbs back.
Phosphorus and potassium set your fertilizer
Phosphorus helps grass grow roots. It matters most on new lawns and on lawns we are about to seed. Potassium helps the lawn handle heat, drought and foot traffic. When either reading is low, we change your fall and spring fertilizer to make up the gap. Your fertilizer stays the same when both are normal.
Organic matter shows how well the soil holds water
Organic matter is the broken-down plant material in your soil. It feeds soil life and helps the soil hold water and nutrients. Many new homes here have sod laid on graded subsoil with little organic matter. Soil low in organic matter dries out faster. A lawn on that soil does best with long, less frequent watering. Clippings left on the lawn add organic matter over time.
The lab cannot read nitrogen or packed soil
A lab reading of nitrogen tells us little about a lawn. Nitrogen moves through soil too fast for one reading to hold. We set nitrogen by your grass type and the time of year.
The test also misses how packed the soil is. We measure compaction in eight spots on your lawn with a compaction meter. Packed soil keeps water and roots near the surface. That reading tells us whether your lawn needs core aeration in September.
A lab test cannot see weeds, grubs or a broken sprinkler head. We look for those at each visit and note them on your visit report.
Two tests in the first year start your lawn's record
The test at your first visit sets the fertilizer for your first season. The September test shows what changed. After that we test each September, and the readings build into a record of your lawn from year to year. You get a copy of each report.
Schedule a free assessment to get started. We measure your lawn and give you a price for each program before we leave.