Troubleshooting

1. When going outside, make sure to wear a large amount of bug spray, long pants, and a long sleeve shirt. Please make sure you are well protected from the wilderness; there are many sorts of organisms that you may not know about.

2. Organize before going outside. Label bags and double check for all your supplies.

3. When using the soil auger make sure to go to the first dash mark and no further. This is important becuase different depths of soil have different moisture levels and we need the top 15 cm for our experiement.

4.Make sure to bring a tool or a stick to get the soil out of the extractor, otherwise it gets a bit messy.

5. When measuring out the grid, use a measuring tape that has meters on it.

6. When making the general soil extract, make sure to hold the tube because they are easily knocked over.

7. Make sure you rinse the soil auger after each use, so you don't contaminate other samples.

8. Label each tube when making the general soil extracts and doing the phosphorus test, that way you don't confuse samples.

9. Make sure to wash out the beakers, tubes and pipettes that you used.

10. Wipe down the lab station with alcohol once you're finished all the chemical tests

11. When baking the soil in the oven, make sure to wear oven mitts. 

12. Follow standard safety procedures when performing chemical tests, like wearing goggles, close toed shoes, and gloves.

13. We used model STH-14 of the Lamotte chemical testing kits, but you can use others.