Side by Side Comparison of: Miracle-Gro vs Luster Leaf

We started a new vegetable garden in our back yard and really needed to test our soil before purchasing nutrients.This kit worked great! We did a total of 5 rounds of testing at the 4 corners of the bed and 1 from the middle then averaged the numbers out. So far our garden is going great! Thank you!!

I read many of the reviews from folks that reported to get unsatisfactory results. I followed the supplied instructions and every test worked perfectly. I am pleased with the purchase and the results.

My grown son and I are enthusiastic gardeners. We are also technocrats, who would rather apply fertilizer as-needed rather than from ignorance. this test kit at least gives us a chance to know what the local soil deficiencies are, so we don't have to wait for plants' leaves to manifest deficiency with distress symptoms. And without having to send a soil sample away to a distant testing lab.

Most negative reviews say that pH and N test results are not good, where PH is always neutral and Nitrogen is always depleted, some have actually said that they tried even adding vinegar and pH would still be 7 and such. It is a cheap kit so I bought one, I tested my soil and guess what, I got pH neutral and N depleted, actually N test chamber was very clear without any color like fresh water. So I done another test, only adding a few drops of lemon juice to the pH test chamber, and a solution of uria (48-0-0) to the N test chamber instead of soil water, and after some good shaking, the pH was yellow and the N was purpule, I have attached a picture and you can see for yourself. When this test kit tells you the pH is neutral it really is, and when it tells you have no nitrogen you really don't, and you better be spraying a whole lot of it till you get it to "adequate" level.

I see other reviews on here talking about "send your soil in to a lab" or other alternatives to this product. Fact is, if you were willing to spend the money to send your soil to a lab, you probably wouldn't be buying this. Probably like you, I bought this because it's cheap and it'll give you a basic idea of what's going on in your garden. Here's how it works:You get 4 vials, one for soil pH, and one each for Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K). Essentially, you place the directed amount of soil/water mixture into each vial, and add the contents of the corresponding color-coded capsule. The capsules look like pills, the type you can pull apart and the contents spill out. After you empty the capsule into the vial, you place the rubber cap on the vial, shake and let it sit for the specified amount of time. All the quantities and times are clearly listed in the manual. Each vial has a color chart that is near your soil sample window which allows you to compare the color to the chart. This is how you know where your soil stands as far as pH, N, P and K.I've seen some reviews on here saying it's "impossible" to empty the capsules into the vials because they're too small. True, they're small but if you twist them and carefully pull them apart over the vial it's really pretty easy. If you're elderly or have trouble holding your hands still (or you're just spastic), it might be a task for you but it's still doable. It's really not very difficult.I've tested my soil maybe 10 times using this product, and it's never let me down. It doesn't give you an exact number or anything, but any time I've shown low on something, I amended the soil and a few days later it tested fine and the plants looked healthier.It's not extremely precise, but it's reliable and it will definitely tell you if there is something dangerously askew in your garden. My suggestion to the guy that only uses the lab is that either he got a defective one, or he's not cleaning them properly after each use.You should clean them with water thoroughly after each use and don't mix them up. You don't want to use the pH vial for the K test, or any other variant. Keep them clean, follow the directions and don't mix and match.My only complaint is that the vials can be knocked over easily as they have an oddly poor center of gravity. Once the cap is on, who cares. But, when you're filling them or trying to empty the capsule into them, it's pretty easy to knock them over and that's just a big bag of bollox.Anyhow, to sum up, for the money, this product can really, really help. If you're looking for something more precise then spend some more money or send to a lab like the other guy said. If you just want to make sure everything is generally good in your garden, this will probably suit you just fine.Hope this helps

I grew up on a farm and I've been gardening for over 50 years. When I was a child, we took soil samples to our county agent every few years and guessed during the years between samples. That was not often enough for NKP or PH. The County Agent's report covered 6 or 8 more things such as borax, aluminum, and calcium. Those things change very slowly and only need to be tested for only every 5 to 10 years. In the fifties and sixties, we just assumed the soil would need lime each year; it was acid. However, the amount we used was calculated by rule of thumb. Others used the taste test; tasting the soil to tell if it was sweet or sour; better than nothing but very distasteful when the fertilizer of choice is manure.If you do no other tests, do this one! PH controls whether or not a plant can take up nutrients. All the fertilizer in the world will not help, if the PH is wrong. I purchased the full test set as well as this one so that I could do more frequent PH tests and in more places such as around shrubs, bushes, and trees, especially fruiting trees and bushes. I have been using these products for at least 20 years. This purchase was just to renew my supply. I can usually go 2 or3 years with a full Luster Leaf set plus an extra PH test set. Buy and use it!. It will save you money on fertilizer and you can have the best garden in the neighborhood!

Easy to follow instructions. My lawn is growing like crazy now that I have made the adjustments using this test kit

Worked as described. I was trying to see how my soil in my garden was holding up and this test kit was detailed enough for my needs

Exactly as depicted and described.I got this to test the main nutrients in my soil (obviously) for my vegetable garden. I then proceeded to have a fun "science day" with my sister as we tested the soil. Results are quick and easy to read.I have no way to tell if the results are accurate, but it said my potash, nitrogen, phosphorous, and pH are fine and my garden has been doing great, so I assume it is telling me the truth!Pros:All of my results were easy to read. I don't know if they would be as easy to read for the lower levels of nutrients if your soil water is cloudy.Everything is easily color coded for the different tests and nutrients.The containers seal very well.The instructions are very clear.There is a reorder slip with the kit so I don't have to search for how to get refills for more tests.It comes with 10 testing capsules for each nutrient (40 capsules total).I think the design is good, however there were a few minor annoyances:The test capsules are difficult to open and I ended up spilling the powder a few times.The test containers have tiny plastic feet to make them stand easily, but those feet are smaller than the blob of plastic on their bottom from manufacturing. I need to sand off that blob for them to stand up and not topple over.Once the lids are on they fall over quite easily.Altogether, I like the product, and the annoyances in design are not a problem.If nothing else it is a great teaching tool and science experiment kit!

The Luster Leaf Rapitest Soil test kit works as described! I looked at a variety of these before purchasing and settled on this one because it seemed the most straightforward and well loved. It certainly lived up to that expecation!1) Yes, it is a little difficult to open the capsules of powder for testing. However, I've determined that if you twist the halves apart that works best and you are less likely to spill the powder everywhere.2) I could see where someone with larger hands and little dexterity might find the twisting and dropping the powder into the test chamber might be difficult. For smaller hands like my own, this is fine. But I really doubt this will be trouble for most.3) The only thing I wish this could do was be more specific, but it's obviously not designed to be so. For specific values I've submitted a soil test to my local department of agriculture for testing. But this certainly sent me in the right direction for fertilization in the meantime.Would certainly repurchase.

The dirt in my veggie garden is pretty bad. I didn't add much to replenish the nutrients in the soil for years and that's exactly what this test verified. This is a simple / easy to use test that you can do yourself. I don't think it's worth paying the money to have your soil checked by some lab. I have a feeling you'll probably wait a few weeks before you get your results.The one thing I didn't like (why I only gave 4 stars) is that it can be hard to tell the shade of the color. You have to match up your test sample color to a color strip. This sounds easy but it may be hard to do with your test sample.

I bought this in hopes of getting my soil back to a normal pH. Let me start by saying I have a female cocker spaniel who tends to kill grass everywhere she squats. In the areas where she frequently squats we couldn't get grass to grow at all. I even bought grass guaranteed to grow anywhere. I would put fresh topsoil down and try to plant grass to no avail. Finally I decided the soil must be ridiculously acidic due to my furry friend. So, I purchased this test and did a series of tests over the course of 2 months as we tried various products to neutralize the soil. Once this test showed a good pH for grass, I tried planting the seeds again. To my delight the seeds took and we now have beautiful grass growing for the first time in 5 years! I wish I had purchased this test prior to spending all that money on my futile attempts to plant grass on the acidic soil!

I got the same results as others, my Nitrogen says it's depleted. I find that hard to believe as we do Scott's weed and feed twice a year and put down lime and Potash where we get moss.

Worked well and I was able to determine that my yard was low on nitrogen. My yard looks so much better now. Doing multiple samples around the yard was time intensive. The directions were clear and easy to follow.

The Nitrogen test doesn't work at all for me, and that's what I really needed. It showed "Depleted" (aka no nitrogen reaction). I thought that was odd since I heavily fertilized last fall and now my lawn was the greenest in the neighborhood. But I trusted it and fertilized with a high rate of 34-0-0. Two weeks (and 2.3" rain) later I tested again and it showed "Depleted". ?? Now I lost trust and added some of my 34-0-0 pellets to the soil solution and let them dissolve. I tested again and still no Nitrogen! I attached those pictures. What gives?Perhaps it's because of the color of my soil. You will see in the pictures that even after I followed the directions and let my solution set 24 hours, yes 24 painful hours of muddy water in the kitchen, even then the water was very brown. Maybe the tester fails to produce a strong enough color change to read.Edit: I emailed LusterLeaf and they think it might take more time for Nitrites to convert to Nitrates. They also say I should wait longer than 24 hours and see if the water clears up.

This seemed to test the pH okay, but the tube is difficult to use and fill properly. I found the design to be lacking. However, it got the job done, and was very well priced.

It provides reasonable results on the pH (that's easy), potentially on the potassium and phosphorus, but I don't trust the nitrogen reading at all. I put recently-fertilized soil in and it showed zero nitrogen. I put straight fertilizer in, still zero nitrogen. Probably better to dig up a soil sample and send it off to your local county extension type joint for a legit analysis if you're going to base much off of the results. Or do that in one location where you also take a sample with this, and if it matches then continue on with this. If not, chuck it and write a review!

While more acidic soils will indeed read more acidic with this test, the actual Ph value isn't accurate. I know for a fact that my soil is slightly acidic at the least, yet every test comes out as neutral or alkaline. I tried to test peat moss, which is supposed to be acidic, and indeed it read acidic; but only 6.0. Peat moss is supposed to be a Ph 4.8-5.2. Take results with a grain of salt, I recommend getting your soil professionally tested.

Followed directions explicitly. The color it turned did not match any of the colors on the card. Very frustrating.

The cons: They could have made every thing easier to use. The caps on the test bottles are hard to take off. The test bottles wont stand on their own and they're small. The test capsules are challenging to pull apart w/o spilling the power.The pros: the instructions are really good easy to understand and explain alot. The price is reasonable compared to professional lab results

I had soil samples sent to two different labs plus tested the same soil samples with this test kit. The pH results from this test kit were pretty close to the lab results, but the other three tests were not even close. My recommendation is to buy the pH-only test kit if you only want pH results. If you need N, P, K results, don't waste your money on this kit. Spend the $15-20 and send your soil sample to a lab.

I didn't want to pay $9 for multiple tests through Penn State plus cost of shipping so I bought this. After testing my garden I was a bit surprised to see the PH was 7.0 to 7.5 on every sample taken when Pennsylvania is known for acidic soil. I sent a sample to Penn State to get a more accurate test and the PH came back at 5.7 which is significantly lower than this test concluded. I thought maybe it was my well water so I bought distilled water with the same result. I tested the soil 6 to 7 times with the exact same results. I added a drop of Vinegar and it turned the test bright red but the test doesn't seem to be sensitive enough to detect subtle soil acidity.

For every soil sample I tested this powder with, it indicated it was 7.5 ph. I even tried some of my almost pure peat mix in it and it said it was 7.5, which is the highest the meter will go so I'm assuming it's just bad powder. I tested the same soil in the other compartment with my liquid ph tester (also bought on here, good stuff), and it showed the real PH values (5.0 for my peat mix), 6.5 for my other regular soil. So it gets to keep a star because I'll use the container for testing with my liquid ph tester.

The Ph test seemed to work okay. However, the nitrogen test ran low, the potassium test ran high, and the phosphorus test was just confusing. As a control, I tried testing my tap water. As expected, I got a Ph of 7 and N0 (Depleted) nitrogen. Potassium, on the other hand, was somewhere between K2 (adequate) and K3 (sufficient)! I know there are trace minerals in tap water so I looked up potassium in a recent town water quality report. It said there are only 8 parts-per-million potassium in our tap water so I wouldn't expect such a strong reaction. (I suspect it may be cross reacting with sodium instead.) The phosphorus test was hard to interpret because the test chemical came out of solution as it changed color. The instructions gave no indication whether this was how it's supposed to work or if you're supposed to mix it back in to read the results.When I tried it on actual soil, I got Ph = 6.5, K = K4 (probably exaggerated like the result for plain water), P = P2 (again with extra blue material condensed on the bottom) and N = N0. I was suspicious of the nitrogen result since the plant didn't seem nitrogen starved. I dropped some broken fragments of a tomato fertilizer spike directly into the solution and it barely changed color at all. Do your plants a favor and avoid amending soil based on such unreliable NPK tests. You might get some use out of the Ph test though.

Did not work. All tests for N, P and K show depleted, even though the garden beds were prepped with Miracle Gro soil (50/50 with native soil) and currently have tomatoes, cukes and corn growing in them. Have a hard time believing all are depleted, more likely the contents of the capsules was expired. pH showed middle of the road, but water was still about the same brown color as the others.

Did not come with any capsules! Making it useless.

Plastic tester box arrived cracked and pills busted open.

I seriously doubt that this product works as advertised. Tested three soil samples and saw slight differences in the acidity based on the color scale. Added acid to some of the soils to see if I could get anything close to the colors for acidic soil: nothing. Added bases: Still nothing. Waste of money.A month later. Used a different batch and tested. Got some results that seem to match the commercial soil testing service. Tried adding acid to this batch and it immediately went bright red. Perhaps the first batch was old or defective.

I followed the directions to the letter but found that none of the tests yielded any results except dirty water. No colors appeared except n the Ph test. Even for my organic vegetable bed that I keep rich in organic matter, no nutrients registered. The product was a huge disappointment.

I did 4 tests from different sections of the garden. They all showed 0 nitrogen. I was suspicious of the results so I added some nitrogen fertilizer and they still read zero. The P test showed a color far more intense than the highest reading on the chart. The test for potash indicated zero for all 4 tests. I performed all analyses carefully and according to the directions.