From a program aimed at farmers to offer free soil testing, the McCracken County Extension District Board partnered with County Manager and Horticulture Agent to include all residents of the county. Efforts to allow up to 7 free soil tests for the current fiscal year aimed at saving stakeholder's dollars and also reducing the overuse of fertilizers. excessive NPK in the home setting contribute to pollution in the waterways. With the fact that Paducah is an MS4 community, this is an important concept for the environment. 

Free soil testing to the McCracken residents was advertised virtually due to the problems of Covid-19 pandemic. Many residents sought soil testing to grow vegetables in their soil. 

Also, due to efforts to reduce person-to-person contact in the pandemic we are now enduring, the soil-test results became "touches" in all but a few samples that were submitted. Horticulture Agent used scanned copies of the soil-test-results sheet to write in recommendations electronically instead of hand-written recommendations of the past. This practice also allowed the recommendations on NPK and pH to be emailed upon completion. Prior to Covid-19 outbreak, the reports and recommendations were sent by the US Postal Service. 

As a way to increase the sharing of educational information in horticulture from UK/KSU and McCracken County Extension Service, participants in the free-soil-testing program were asked if their email address could also be added to the electronic horticulture-newsletter edition.

Monthly horticulture newsletters, reaching 406 subscribers by email, and social media were outreach. Success has been recorded by the increase in numbers of participants. 

Of  all of the soil samples processed by McCracken County Extension Service, 89.66% is horticulture in the months of July 1 - Sep 30, 2020. there were a total of 58 samples during that time period. 

This also meant that 58 locations were analyzed to direct the best practices of using Phosphorus (P) in the growing of residential gardens and lawns.  See the UK publication "No P on my Lawn" for more information on the need to only use Phosphorus (P) when recommended by a soil test. 

For overall use iof the soil testing lab by McCracken residents we compared numbers. Looking at the month of September for the past 4 years, we can see a trend: 

SEP 2017: 24; SEP 2018: 18; SEP 2019: 18; SEP 2020: 42. 

It is possible to see that the numbers of residents using the soil testing program for September of 2020 are up by 233.3 percent over 2019.

Attached is a snapshot of the page from the summer and fall editions of the horticulture newsletter telling about the free soil sampling program.