Topical Guide 607
Mark Dorset
Tools: Soil Test Kit
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 18:
“They don’t have any trees, either,” I said. “Not real trees, anyway. Just little trees, crummy trees.”
“It’s the soil,” said my father.
“I guess,” I said. I knew that this was possible. I had spent many happy hours testing the soil in our back yard with my grandfather, using a nifty little soil test kit that he had ordered by mail. It came in a sturdy white cardboard box, inside which were tiny vials of liquid and larger empty vials. One mixed a pinch of the soil and some drops of the various liquids in one of the larger vials and then held the resulting muddy water up to the light of the sun and compared its color with the colors of cellophane circles in a card that came with the kit. The circles progressed gradually from one color to another, so gradually that you couldn’t say, exactly, where the dominance of reddish brown ended and the dominance of yellowish brown began. From this testing I learned that each vegetable requires, in effect, a soil of a different color, so I knew that it might have been the soil that stunted the trees, but something in my father’s voice, a reluctance to continue, said that there was more to it than that.
As of Friday, November 3, 2023, this item was listed on eBay as “Antique Sudbury Soil Testing Kit Clear Acrylic Box With Instructions”:
See also:
Tools: Carpenter’s Pencil: TG 80
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