I completely recommend testing your soil every season! However, I've found out the hard way this year that sometimes doing the home kit isn't enough. I did a test when we bought our house and it was pretty much deficient in everything. So we added appropriate amendments and off we went. At first everything seemed to do great, but then things started to fail. It started with our squash. We had a complete failure. Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Even our zucchini was pathetic. Then our corn started looking pretty ragged. And so it went on. Now our rhubarb is struggling, as is our strawberries and tomatoes. I've tried fertilizing, but got nothing. This is the first year of growing anything at our new place. We used to use raised beds, but now, because the garden is so large, that would be cost prohibitive.

Also, the garden is on a well. My worry is that the well has been infiltrated with salt water. We're not too far - maybe a mile - from the SF Bay (though we are on the delta end, with less sea influence). But at the same time, according to our neighbors and the pump companies we've talked to, we have one of the only running wells on this side of the county. It was a complete pain in the butt to even get someone from a pump company to come out and help us get it running. One company even told us they wouldn't come because no one in our area had a well and it wasn't worth their time, even though they were only a 10 min drive away. Sucks for them.

So at first we considered having the water tested because we noticed white deposits forming on the soil. Turns out the cheapest test is $300 and looks at drinking suitibility. Well, we don't drink it, we just want to find out if it's suitible for irrigation. No one does that. From what we told them they thought it was probably just a calcium buildup issue because the well hadn't been used for so long (at least several decades). That was at the begininning of the season. It hasn't gotten worse, but the plants seem upset. Though I should mention that the ornamentals seem to be doing fine.

So I figured I needed to buck up and get a professional soils test. I'm a landscape architect, so we see soil's reports all the time. They are MUCH cheaper than the water test. I just sent my soil off Monday. According to UPS it has already been delivered. I can't wait to get the results and recommendations! I really think that this is a great idea to do at least once for your yard to determine where exactly you stand on all macro & micronutrients, salts, lime, pH, boron, etc.