Soil Sampling

From the start soil sampling seems relatively simple. Collect one pound of soil, send it to a soil lab to analysis. It takes a meticulous person year after year to be able to achieve repeatable nutrient results. OptiFarm believes there are 4 critical steps to achieve consistent soil results.

Timing: OptiFarm tailors the soil sampling around your farming operations. It allows for a proactive plan instead of a reactionary hurry and get it done. This also allows for deficiency observations during scouting and tissue sampling procedures. This allows you several months to price fertilizer sources and to plan any logistics prior to hitting the fields.

Soil Conditions: Sampling the field at consistent times gives you a greater understanding of soil characteristics, If OptiFarm consultants had not sampled the same fields and same spots using GPS, and the results would have varied. This adds to a level of confusion, on which is correct.

Quality of Cores: What makes it into the bag? This is extremely important as fertilizer stratify in soil layers.

Personnel: OptiFarm provides consistent trained personnel. This person is the last step in quality control for your farm. They look at core quality prior to it being added to sample.

Quality of Cores: What makes it into the bag? This is extremely important as fertilizer stratify in soil layers. https://wintexagro.com/products

Through the use of a Wintex 1000 semi-automatic soil sampler we take homogeneous soil samples up to a depth of 30 cm (approx. 12″). The depth can vary infinitely from 10 – 30 cm (approx. 4″ – 12″ ). The soil sample is taken with a probe and not an auger as with other soil sampling machines. This means that the Wintex 1000 takes a completely homogenous sample, being a cone of soil that is taken at the adjusted depth. If the sample is taken with an auger, you will always take more material from the top layers than from the lower layers of soil. Wintex 1000 is distinguished by the fact that it can take samples in any kind of soil – including newly ploughed soil.

Used in conjunction with the highly accurate AgLeader Technology GPS equipment we can sample on any grid size requested by the customer. Generally, around 20 equally spaced samples are taken and combined into one sample and sent for analysis. Fields larger than 10 Ha are split sampled. We can also sample on a smaller grid for nutrient mapping.