Hi Jana,

This is a practice we used to use a lot, and found it quite useful. Not only can monitoring soil EC be useful for determining timing of foliar sprays, it is also very valuable for determining any need to add fertilizer to the soil.

It is important to remember that microbial metabolites have a lower EC, and higher carbon soils will buffer out EC to some degree. We have observed that healthy soils have a lower EC requirement to maintain vigorous crop growth than soil with low organic matter and poor biological activity.