The soil samples were taken. Where are the results?
Every few years the fields are sampled, by your agronomist, a sampling company or yourself with an auger and a bag. The lab sends results a few weeks later as a PDF: sample references, pH, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, perhaps organic matter, one row per sample. The agronomist may send a second version with recommendations. The file goes into an email folder, or gets printed and put in a ring binder.
When you or the adviser next want to know how a field's results have changed over time, the search starts. The sample references do not use your field names. Two fields were sampled together as one. One report came from a different lab with different units. The history is there, somewhere, in four PDFs and a ring binder.
Why soil results never make it into one place
The reason is that a soil report is written around samples, and your records are written around fields.
- Sample references are the sampler's codes or numbers, not the names your team uses.
- One sample may cover several small fields, or one large field may have several samples or a grid.
- Labs, units and methods can differ between rounds, which makes side by side comparison harder.
- Results come by email to whoever arranged the sampling, which may be the agronomist, not you.
- Grid sampling and variable rate maps come as shapefiles or in a platform, not a PDF at all.
So the results exist, and they are accurate, but they are never joined to the field record where you would look for them.
The cost of results you cannot find
Soil testing is money spent to inform decisions, and those decisions belong to you and your adviser, not us. If the results cannot be found when a decision is being made, the money was spent for less benefit than it should have been.
It costs time too. Before every planning meeting or scheme application that asks for soil information, somebody has to find the reports and work out which sample was which field. When fields change hands or tenancies end, soil records are often the first thing lost.
What we build: soil results filed by field
What we build is a soil results store linked to your field register.
- Lab reports are forwarded to a dedicated inbox or dropped into a folder. The system reads each report, whatever the lab, and pulls out each sample's reference, date and results with units.
- Each sample is matched to a field, using a mapping you confirm once: this sampler's code 12 is Long Meadow. Where one sample covers several fields, the result is linked to all of them and marked as shared.
- Results are stored with the lab name and method as reported, so values from different labs or methods are not silently mixed. We show them side by side with a note, and your adviser decides how to compare them.
- Grid sampling files, where you have them, are stored and shown on the field map.
- Each field has a soil history: every sampling round, with the original report attached, so nothing depends on the summary being right.
- A simple report lists fields by when they were last sampled, useful when planning the next round.
| Question | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| When was this field last sampled? | Search email for a report | Shown on the field page |
| How has pH changed here? | Open three PDFs and compare | History listed in date order |
| Which fields are due a test? | Guess from memory | List sorted by last sample date |
| What did the lab actually say? | Find the original | Original report attached to each result |
We do not interpret results or recommend lime or fertiliser. The store puts the information in front of the people who do.
Planning with the whole history on screen
The agronomist arrives for the autumn planning meeting. Instead of a ring binder, you open the field register on the office screen. Each field shows its soil history, last sampling date and the original lab report one click away. The fields not sampled for longest show at the top of the due list, and the agronomist uses it to plan the next round.
When the new results arrive, they are read, matched and added to each field's history before anyone asks for them.
Is your soil data scattered like this?
- Soil reports sit in an email folder or ring binder filed by date.
- Sample codes do not match the names you use for fields.
- You cannot quickly say when a field was last sampled.
- Results from different rounds or labs are hard to compare side by side.
- Only your agronomist has the full set of results.