Mind Your Minerals: DIY Soil Sample Kit

What does Minding Your Minerals have to do with YOUR garden soil?

Most of us are struggling with an : mineral excesses and deficiencies that leave our plants weak, stunted, and defenseless against attacks from pests and disease.

This not only leaves us frustrated with our gardening efforts, it also guarantees that we're harvesting low-quality food! Bad news for those of us using food as medicine.

The solution is a specialty soil test which shows you exactly how the minerals in your soil relate to one another -

By drafting a plan to shift YOUR soil minerals towards the 'sweet spot' (target numbers shown on your test results) you can see two incredible changes take place:

• Your plants become naturally immune to pests and disease as they are finally able to access the nutrients they so desperately need 
  

• Every fruit, veggie and leaf will hold more nutrients per calorie, becoming a legitimate high-quality food

The key to both of these amazing outcomes is Minding Your Minerals - making sure that the nutrients in your soil are at levels that 'play nice' together.

Don't worry, we'll walk you through everything - understanding your results and the path ahead of you, as well as all of the hands-on how-tos, with videos, pdfs, and email support.

This is a special kit that we put together for YOU and YOUR soil. Here's how it works:

• Watch the video above and follow the instructions for taking a soil sample. 
• As soon as you purchase the Kit, you'll receive a Soil Sample Worksheet to enclose with your sample along with Mailing Instructions.

• The moment your results hit our inbox, we will forward them to you, along with access to more how-to videos and a pdf glossary of all of the terms that you'll see on your report, field by field. 

FAQs:

Why should I purchase the test from you instead of directly from the lab?

There are three good reasons to purchase the test from us:

• Our test goes above and beyond. We've asked the lab to test for a handful of trace minerals not included in their standard test.
• With every test purchased, we include how-to videos for weighing, measuring and applying minerals. See first hand exactly how to implement this technique!
•  We also include a pdf Glossary, that defines your results, field by field. Otherwise, the lab just assumes that you're a professional soil analyst.

• THE BIGGEST REASON to purchase your test through us is this: occasionally, a soil will reveal itself to be 'calcareous' (kal-kare-E-us), meaning that it is chalky, or composed of calcium carbonate (you'll notice that we guide you through a simple home-kitchen test for this issue in the video above.) These soils must be treated a bit differently. Finding out that your soil is calcareous feels a bit like losing at a (non-fatal) game of Russian Roulette; however, we can take the pressure off. If you receive this information, we will pick up the tab for the additional expert advice that you need going forward - this means no extra charges for you!

I'm a no-till gardener who goes out of my way to leave my soil undisturbed. Will I have to disturb my soil to use these techniques?

Awesome - soil building is one of our favorite approaches to organic gardening. However, we still recommend that you test and amend your soil as a starting point, returning to no-till practices and mulching afterwards. The issue at hand is that if certain minerals are not in your soil at present, you'll need to add them in at the correct levels in order for your methods to be truly successful. 

One helpful trick is to scrape away the top few inches of mulch to take a soil sample and incorporate your missing minerals, and then to replace the mulch layer afterwards. 

What happens when I push the buy button?

• You are immediately sent a receipt, a Soil Sample Worksheet and Mailing Instructions.
• Watch the video above for instructions on collecting your sample.
• You'll need to pack up your sample with the completed worksheet and send them off to specialty lab. You will need to cover the postage.
• As soon as we receive your results,we will pass them along to you, with a pdf glossary and video instructions for crafting your personalized soil mineral blend.

Need more info?

• If you'd like to know more about testing your soil to see how it correlates to Dr. William Albrecht's Base Cation Saturation Ratio, sign up for our free video series at: wholehealthgardening.com
• Questions? Email us at hello@wholehealthgardening.com or find Jenny on Instagram as @jenny_grows
• Who IS behind the online brand Whole Health Gardening? We're two friends - expert organic gardener, Jenny Prince of Grand Isle, Vermont and beginning gardener Liz Brazier, originally from New Zealand, now living and gardening on the Jersey Shore. We're also the hosts of the weekly iTunes podcast, the Grow Better Green Show.