Blumat MicroBiometer - Professional Lab-Grade Soil Test Kit for Microbial Biomass, Test Soil Health and Fertility, Perfect for Living Soil and No-Till

Haven't tried it out yet, but it promises to be a much more affordable way to evaluate compost and soils. Important to note, this isn't an actual meter, since it uses your smart phone with an ap. It is the testing accessories and enough materials for 10 tests. Additional test materials are available. For information on why it is useful, search Johnson-Su bioreactors. I have very high expectations of the information gleaned from these tests!

Really wanted this to work, a couple problems: 1) the kit doesn’t contain a way to measure the water quantity so you’ll need a way to do that; 2) the “sifters” have a mesh that is too tight to use with moist soils, and 3) the results were inconsistent. Using the same sample each teat read Drastically different even after reading 5 different cards. Really wanted this to work but it’s unreliable.

It took me a while before I finally pulled the trigger and decided to buy this “lab-grade kit”, but after hearing Jeff Lowenfels talk about it at a conference, I had to try it out. The results were amazing and gave me an accurate biomass reading. I decided to test out my non living-soil and the results came back much lower than my living soil biomass results! Honestly I can now see why they are saying this is 10% of the cost of an actual lab test because the whole procedure actually felt like it was something a scientist would actually do!