the best kit i find is one made by
manutech i know you shouldn't
mention brand names but there are other
kits around and they just don't stack up
as far as reliability and accuracy goes
you're concerned well i've spoken to
many farmers that use these and they all
say the same thing same brand don't buy
any other brand
so it's australian brand australian made
so i'm not promoting a foreign entity
and it consists of a plastic plate
and a buffer
and a powder
you put on and also a color chart
which you hold against your your sample
so
you just dig a dig a sample in the soil
and this spot here
you can see you've got a knife here is
that pocket knife to get the soil sample
this is burmatic there's some plantain
some grasses uh these are all good
quality pasture plants and the one the
reason i do the ph is because
it has a lot to do with what grows in
the paddock
so we'll just pull that apart you can
see it's very dense a lot dense ground
cover
wonderful
get down into the soil
and i just cut a bit of a sample of soil
out
on the end of the knife like
so and if there's large pieces of
organic matter flick them out because
they're always going to be acidic like
plant roots etc
that's a good point
yeah the the rhizosphere around the
plant is always the most acidic part of
the soil and we're really looking for
the overall
ph or background ph if you like a few
drops of this buffer you can see that
soil is let's get it right yeah three
drops no just
the idea is to make a paste
there's about five or six there and you
might have to add some more and you just
want to mix it up and make a paste
and if you put too much on just add a
bit of soil
just mix it up
that'll do
it's a very simple process
and this is very reliable it's i do it
because it's pretty much foolproof and
you get this powder
sprinkle a bit on it
and what you do not just sprinkle oh
well you just want to put a bit of a
covering on it
these things sometimes get whoops a bit
sticky
there you go and that takes about a
minute to develop
and
so when you say a minute you actually
mean around about 60 seconds yeah around
about then i don't i don't
misconstrue it a minute mark just it's a
yes yeah about one minute
to develop the color
and then
you hold the chart against it and it's
not a minute yet
when we've done this we'll go down the
paddock to where there's a monoculture
or love grass and we'll do another one
and you'll see that there'll be a
difference in ph i haven't done this for
some time in fact the last time i did it
in this area at a field day was probably
about four years ago and i don't think
it's changed dramatically
as soon as you get to a monoculture
then
monocultures above ground have a
monoculture below ground
microbially
okay so you get a
big percentage of bacteria under a
monoculture
whether it's love grass or in kangaroo
grass
if there's a monoculture there's an
imbalance above ground and there'll be a
biological imbalance below ground right
so we can see on this now that you hold
the chart against it
and
it's between six and a half and seven
no six
how close can you get between six and a
half and seven by observation but if you
do it often enough i i find i can get to
within point two point two yeah
and that's close enough you only want a
ballpark figure
so that could be you
by looking at that now we could instead
of saying six and a half comes seven it
is closer to
i'd say it's closer to six and a half
than seven i'd say that's about six
point six
6.7 somewhere around there remarkable
accuracy remarkable accuracy isn't it it
is for a simple tool
and it's foolproof if you use an
electronic device that relies on a
buffer you don't know the quality of the
buffer
and if the buffer is is going off or has
gone off we haven't zeroed it
yeah with still distilled water yes
then you get an inaccurate reading and
you have no knowledge no way of knowing
whether it's accurate or not whereas
this this is full proof and it doesn't
matter if it's
if it's not to 0.1 or 0.2 you just want
a range
you