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Soil Analysis Microscope and Supplies
Why should you learn to look at and understand soil biology yourself?
If you're like most growers, you've been getting soil assessments done for years by a nearby land grant university.
Generally, you aren't getting a detailed assessment of your actual soil biology - the thing that could make your soil more healthy and powerful over the long term. Look at your last assessment and the attached recommendations. Our guess is there's a lot of conventional advice about macronutrients. A lot of what you've seen over the years. And over the years, your soil hasn't improved.
Before you spread your standard compost tea across your growing acreage, take the time to learn how to evaluate a soil specimen yourself and make sure the compost you use adds to the long-term quality of the soil.
You don't need an expensive electron microscope. Just an affordable compound microscope with the right accessories, which you can find here.
Is your soil alive?
Assessing soil health with a soil microscope helps you create a healthier and more sustainable growing environment for farm agriculture or for your summer garden. But you probably already knew that.
When you look at a soil sample from an area on your property to assess soil health, you can use microscopy to look for a lot of indicators of healthy soil in a small amount of time.
The type of microscope you need to see the valuable microscopic organisms you care about is a compound microscope. It allows you to see aspects of soil microbiology the human eye never could.
You can look for any type of living organism. You might spot protozoa or identifiable soil bacteria. Maybe a nematode.
You can identify fungi, bacterium, or other decomposers.
Looking at soil through the microscope is the most valuable tool for managing everything from organisms and the soil nutrients they create, to soil texture, water retention - for managing the entire soil food web that makes every plant you grow healthier and more vigorous, and more sustainable.
What should you spot in healthy soil under a compound microscope?
Soil (or at least good soil) contains an entire food web of organisms that breathe, battle and eat each other, poop, die, decompose, and create all kinds of by-products (like carbon dioxide) and biomass. They create plant nutrients (like nitrogen or phosphorus) and teach plants to resist diseases.
A healthy soil food web is truly alive. And you can easily observe it on a microscope slide.
Soil Science Microscopy can tell you how best to plant!
Plant roots take all the good soil minerals and facilitate plant growth. Over time, plant growth removes microorganisms from the soil. You're looking for missing soil organisms so you can reintroduce them (by adding organic matter like compost or reintroducing missing species of bacteria - by using all the tools you already have. Just more effectively).
Find the microscope and accessories you need below and take control of your soil testing, and your growing success, today.
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The World's Largest Microscope Store, You can Trust Microscope.com
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