4-in-1 Soil Test Kit, Soil Moisture Meter, pH Meter, Light & Nutrient Tester for Indoor/Outdoor Plants, Garden, Farm, Lawn Care-No Battery Needed

I got this to check the soil I use for my container gardening. I use the same soil over and over mixing in last year's compost every spring. I started planting last week and measured the compost and soil PH. Right at 7 which is a little too high for my potatoes. Hopefully I can sweeten the soil a bit.I will probably continue to use my trusty finger to check the moisture because I don't want to stab too many potatoes.

This all-in-one soil test kit is a lot of help in understanding how things are progressing. We needed something to check why our plants were dying and what they needed. This meter gives you enough information to decide on what these plants need. It comes with a booklet with details on what plant needs what pH level, etc, which is handy.The best part is it being 1 kit to test all 4 items, I don't need to run with 4 different meters. It's probably not accurate in its reading, but this is good enough for beginners.

This little gadget had high ambitions—moisture, pH, light, nutrients—all in one go, no batteries needed. I was intrigued, maybe even a little optimistic. So I ran it through the gauntlet: houseplants, garden beds, potting soil, rocky dirt, even fresh nursery plants.Moisture? That part works well. It gives a decent read on whether your soil's parched or pleasantly damp, which is honestly the most useful part of any soil test.The rest of the features? Let’s just say they haven’t earned my trust badge yet. No matter where I stuck it—indoors, outdoors, topsoil, potting mix—the pH, light, and nutrient levels never left the red zone. And when I placed it under grow lights that put out more than 5,000 lux (hello, sun-in-a-box), the meter barely budged above 1,000.Would I entrust my entire plant collection’s health to it? Probably not. It's more of a curious garden sidekick than a soil scientist. But for quick moisture checks? It earns its spot in the tool tote.Bottom line: it won’t replace your gardening instincts, but it might help confirm them—at least when it comes to water.

The meter looks and feels sturdy, with a substantial 5/16 x 8-inch probe and a meter that can swivel back to make it easy to read from different angles. The included instruction manual discusses how to use the instrument and how to care for it, and it has soil moisture, pH, and light lists of many plants with recommended levels. While the lists are long, many plants only appear in one or two of the lists.The manual's fonts are quite small for those of us with advancing seniority, but on the back of the meter is a QR code sticker with the words "LD520 USER GUIDE." An electronic version of the manual would be handy, but the QR code didn't seem to connect to anything. I sent an email about it to the support address in the manual, and I received a very courteous reply from Rebecca within hours. She said there was a problem with their server, but it should be back up "soon." In the mean time, she attached a PDF version of the instruction manual that I can read more easily on my computer.I tried the meter in various potted plants and in my garden and lawn. The manual cautions that the probe must be kept clean and corrosion-free, hence the fine sandpaper and the need to wipe the probe before and after each test. I carefully wiped and sanded as directed in the manual, but the results were mixed.Moisture: The meter generally works, though the response varied with the soil type. When you first use the meter, it might be a good idea to compare the meter reading with a finger probe for each soil type and density. It essentially didn't move in my wife's orchid soil. I learned later that battery-less meters such as this don't work well in typical orchid growing media that are often kept fairly dry.Light: During daytime indoors near a large skylight, where many plants do quite well, the meter registered no light at all. Outdoors on a day with thin, high clouds and indistinct shadows, the meter read off the scale on the high end. It's an instantaneous reading, so you would need to average the light over several hours to estimate plant suitability.pH: The meter always read about 7 (neutral) in different soils in different pots with different plants and even outdoors, where our soil is somewhat alkaline.Nutrients: The meter seemed to reflect moisture more than nutrient level of soil. It doesn't distinguish between the key nutrients that plants need (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorous, etc.) so even if it worked I wouldn't know what to feed my plants.I did some research online about battery-less soil testers. The soil sensors use galvanic voltages generated by the dissimilar metals on the business end of the probe, and most of the references confirmed that only the moisture measurement is generally reliable for these types of meters.So the meter gets good points for build quality, the detailed instruction manual, and quick customer service. It can give you an idea of soil moisture content without getting your finger dirty, but it is not really a hand-held soil laboratory.

We got this tester to check the soil and lighting on her mini trees. We have been wondering if they were getting enough light, water, nutrients and if the PH was right.Now we know. It did let us know that the lights we are using weren't at the correct/optimum setting. Already paid for itself on the first use.It is well built and seems to be accurate. Now we are going to go test all the plants to make sure we are doing the best we can for them.If you have indoor plants, get this tester to make sure you are doing everything right. It'll pay off with healthier and beautiful plants. For $!6 you can't go wrong considering what we pay to take of them.I do recommend this tester for your plants sake.

I got this mainly for the PH function for my soils and was a bit disappointed that this is more or less a gauge for alkaline soils and not soils that may be slightly acidic or somewhere in between. The scale goes from 8 to 1, with the 8 to 7 very tiny and then going up from there. It would be much more helpful if the range for the PH reading was in the 4-9 range but don't understand chemistry enough to understand if you need different test methods to test acidity in soils vs alkalinity.The other functions seems to work well and the nutrient one was interesting but also would reflect what I would expect as I poked it in a few different soils where I new their approximate makeup. I.e. regular soil in my yard that I knew needed nutrients showed low, my compost mixed garden soil was medium and some of my potting mixes read on the higher end.