Save Money By Sampling Your Soil This Winter.

Knowing the fertility of the soil on your farm is the first step towards growing healthy crops of cereal and grass. The fertility of the soil on your farm will vary from field to field according to soil type and the management of the field.

To get a snapshot of fertility, soil samples will provide the state of your soil and farm, allowing informed decisions to be made regarding the suitability and ability of individual fields to meet the nutrient requirements of different crops. These individual samples can then be collated to create a fertiliser plan, and thus maximise production whilst protecting the environment, and saving money.

pH is one the most important elements of soil fertility as it affects the availability of all other nutrients. The optimum pH level is, 6.3 for grasslands and 6.5 for cereal crops. At a pH 5.5 only 77% of nitrogen, 48% of phosphorus and 77% of potassium will be available. With CAN fertiliser predicted to be costing around £600 next year you will be losing around £140 per tonne with a pH at 5.5.  Even at pH6 you will still be losing over £20 per tonne of fertiliser applied.

Fane Valley offer a precision soil sampling service ensuring the soil samples taken from your fields give a fair representation of the field, giving you confidence in the results. The Fane Valley Agronomy & Forage team can then interpret the results and give advice creating a plan to help get you soil into optimum fertility and environment sound production. The plan will give recommendations for liming and take into consideration any organic manure you have available to select the most cost-effective fertiliser products for next season.

To find out more about the Fane Valley soil analysis service contact your local store or call 028 9261 0485.