Soil fertility is dependent on several factors, only one of which is the level of nutrients in the soil. What matters to plants is the level of available nutrients, which can be only a small percentage of the actual nutrients in the soil.
The main reason why nutrients may not be taken up by plant roots is the acidity or pH. Closely connected also are soil conductivity and activity, which are also ways of testing the amounts of positive hydrogen ions in the soil.
This means there are several ways you can test your soil's fertility and assess whether an 'unfertile' soil is actually depleted in nutrients or (more often) is simply unable to release those nutrients into the plant roots.
Simply correcting the pH of your soil might easily release all the nutrients needed by your growing plants, but only accurate testing or a longer period of trial and error will tell you. Testing in advance is usually better than finding out later, when your crop yields are lower than hoped and serious money has possibly been wasted on fertilisers your soil didn't need.
Naturally, all the soil test equipment you need is available from the Novanna website!
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