Soil Test Kits

Need a Soil Test? 

Soil Test Supplies and Locations:

• Fairlington Community Center, 3308 South Stafford St, Arlington, VA 22206.  You will find them in a box affixed to a gate to our Teaching Garden adjacent to the loading dock at the rear of the building. 
• Greenstreet Gardens, 1721 W. Braddock Rd, Alexandria, VA 22302
• Brown’s Hardware, 100 W Broad St., Falls Church, VA 22046
• Bill’s Hardware, 2213 N Buchanan St, Arlington, VA 22207
• Cherrydale Hardware, 3805 Lee HWY, Arlington, VA 22207
• Ayers Hardware, 5853 Washington Blvd, Arlington, VA 22205

You will mail your samples to the Virginia Tech Soil Testing lab using the address on the Soil Sample Information Sheet that accompanies the container.

Allow 2 weeks for results to be returned via email.   For help with interpretation please contact Agent, Kirsten Conrad at kirsten.conrad@vt.edu. For help finding your results please contact Neil Snyder, Unit Support Staff, at sneil@vt.edu.

***When we can operate in -person again, the Extension Master Gardener Help Desk will be staffed from 9 a.m. to 12 noon, Monday through Friday and you can reach us by phone at 703-338 6414.  You can also leave a message or email anytime. Please keep in mind that we follow the holiday and closure schedule of the Arlington County Government.

April 13, 2021, UPDATE from Virginia Tech:

We recently received a message that the Soil Testing Lab at VT will continue to operate as normal and that there will continue to be two options for clients to receive their reports: a) emailing of reports will continue as normal, and b) clients can contact their local Extension office, who can provide a hard copy report (or share the results through another appropriate method). 

The lab reports that they continue to have issues with emailed reports ending up in client spam folders, which may result in the client contacting the office to say that results have not been received.  They say that they are working on this issue,but please encourage clients to check their spam filters if they contact the office expressing concern about a missing report.

The email that comes from Virginia Tech is from:  soiltest@vt.edu

The VCE Arlington County Office can search for your results if you were unable to find them in your spam folder. Please reach out to Kirsten Conrad, Extension Agent, Agriculture and Natural Resources, at kirsten.conrad@vt.edu, to have your soil test results located.

Thank you for continuing to get the message out about soil testing to educate folks about the importance of plant health, and the threats of fertilizer overuse.