Operation: Soil Sampling

This post was originally published on this site

Whether the rain is slowing the harvest season for us or not, we need to be thinking ahead to the post-harvest activities that will play an important role in next year’s crop.

Soil sampling can be a time intensive task but with Ag Leader’s SMS Desktop software we make it easy to set up the soil sampling sites, whether its zone sampling or point sampling. Using the desktop software allows the placement of the sites to be referenced off past information, making it more accurate. The process to do this is outlined in the following tutorial:

With the SMS Mobile software, you can easily navigate to those sites while in the field for proper collection of the samples. Another benefit to the mobile software is being able to load a background map while soil sampling; whether it’s a variety map, yield map, or previous application map. The steps to soil sample can be reviewed while in the office before heading to the field.

The current list of supported operating systems with SMS Mobile include: Windows Mobile OS 5-6.5, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 (Not RT)

Once the samples have been taken and the results returned from the lab, you can link those results back to the sampling sites to create variable rate prescriptions. Most of us will use a formula derived from our own knowledge, while others will reference state university publications such as:

Or, for SMS Advanced users, writing an equation can allow more variables to be pulled into the prescription:

For all other software tutorials, please visit our resources page.

Please contact our software support team if you have any questions at 515-232-5363 or SMSsupport@agleader.com. Have a safe and productive fall!