This article will focus on the role of soil testing in orchard management, describe steps to acquire informative soil testing information, and discuss two of the more familiar parameters in a soil test report: pH and saturation percentage (SP). Soil testing helps understand the orchard soil environment and how to prevent or correct nutrient deficiencies, toxicities, or conditions that affect the availability of water to the trees in a cost effective manner.  Soil testing may forewarn a problem before it actually affects growth and production. Therefore, it helps anticipate possible problems and offers the earliest opportunity to manage them.  Soil testing is not a substitute for plant tissue testing, rather it is complementary.  If soil and leaf tissue analyses both indicate a deficiency or toxicity, the diagnosis is obvious. If a soil analysis indicates a deficiency or toxicity but a leaf tissue test does not, it may only be a matter of time before the deficiency or toxicity develops in the trees.  Conversely, if leaf tissue analysis indicates a deficiency or toxicity but soil testing does not, it may point out that either the soil testing does not represent how the trees’ root system integrates the soil environment or that the soil environment has changed more rapidly than the nutritional status of the tree. There are two basic philosophies for sampling soils. When marginal soil is known or suspected to exist, consider routine soil testing (at least every two or three years) to understand trends and guide long-term management. When confident that the soil is fertile, non-saline, and suitable for orchard crops such as walnut, almond, and prune, sampling is only necessary to troubleshoot problems.  Some situations do arise where a switch in sampling approach may be necessary. For example, when a change from a higher quality to lower quality