 Well topsoil is created equal as we can see here by looking at these piles. So the homeowner should be forewarned that before they order out topsoil they should go and at least visually check it and if possible also get a chemical and physical analysis of that if they're going to be making a big investment such as putting in a lawn, major flower beds or vegetable gardens or major tree plantings in a site. So obviously looking at this we can see that this is a lot of fill soil which would not probably make very good topsoil. But we want to go ahead in these piles that we have here and kind of look over to the west here of our site where we have some weeds actually growing on the soil. And where weeds are growing is a good indication that soil is at least fertile enough to support weed growth. So with that first clue we're going to go over there and take some samples of that soil and then take it to our lab for some chemical and physical analysis. Okay, what we're doing is we're taking samples from this mound of soil which visibly has the most appealing characteristics because of the weeds that are growing there and it seems to have a wide range of sand, silt and clay in it from a visible standpoint. And we want to take enough to go ahead and provide our lab with an adequate sample. We will now take this sample back to the lab and have a chemical and physical analysis run on it. Here we are in the Soul Testing Laboratory in Waldron Hall at North Dakota State University. These are the samples that Ron just took outside and I am bringing them in here so that we can find out all about the different plant nutrients and anything that might create a problem for growing plants outside. So let's ask Larry Swinson, he is our Soul Testing Manager here. What do I do with these? Okay, when we bring the samples in we'll get as much information as possible before you even analyze the sample. First of all the real basic things, your name, address, where to send us results and if there's anybody else you would like to have the sample sent to or the results sent to like a lawn and garden store or something like that we can send a copy to them too. And then routinely with our soil and analysis for lawns and gardens we do a nitrogen phosphorus, potassium, pH, salts and organic materials so that's kind of a standard but we can also do other tests involving like some of the micronutrients if you start seeing some characteristic deficiency symptoms showing up. Do we have a special place we can mark that? Yes, you can just continue to check them off on this information sheet. And when we bring them in I brought them in these nice little bags that we get from the extension service or from here at the laboratory but you say that there are other places that these bags can be received, right? Yeah, you can get them at your county agent's office or in the Fargo Morrid area we've given them out to a lot of the lawn and garden stores so you could pick them up there and also if nothing else, if all else fails just give us a call and we'll send them out to you from here. In addition to the nutrient information we'll ask you if there's any particular problems with your garden like you know one area doesn't do well or just something so we get all the information we can even involving stuff like if it's in a shady area or it's a porty drained area or stuff like that all this stuff would have a bearing on some problems you might be having in your lawn and garden. If one of these samples was taken from a spot that was particularly wet I should say Larry this area doesn't drain well. Yeah, right. Okay. Okay and that's basically what we'll do here and then after that we'll dry the sample and take it and run it through a sieve and a grinder that we can get it done into small particles. Great so if they come in a little moist that's okay you don't want them sopping wet I guess but just moist is fine or okay it's easier for us to dry them then sometimes for you people out there to do it. Okay so after you run the different analyses you'll make a recommendation? Yeah after we get the analysis finished we'll make a recommendation out of here it's vainly for the nutrients so we can tell if there's a problem with nutrient deficiencies or anything but if it's oftentimes it's something other problem and we'll try and diagnose what that is between myself and some of the extension experts on campus and everything also we would work a lot with the diagnostic lab up which is also located in our building if there's a disease she the lady that runs that lab is able to usually identify what the diseases are. We can take a plant sample into her and take it upstairs very nice and when we take soil samples we want to collect them in a bucket we don't need to put them directly into here especially if we're going to take several different soil samples from different parts of the garden we just want it to be representative of the entire area so we don't want to have one place that would be a problem spot and put it in with the same bag of other garden soils if we have a special area that has some kind of a special issue with it we want to put that in a separate bag and mark that so that Larry will know what kind of problem to anticipate but when we take samples we might take it from several different places in the yard or in your garden mix it up in a clean bucket something you haven't used to mix fertilizer in or pesticides and then we can mix it all up and just take a sub sample and put it into here and mail it to you. And one other thing too if you're having a problem in a certain area of your garden oftentimes it's helpful to take two samples one from the good area and one from a bad area that way we have some kind of comparison that we can see if that might be somewhat the problem.