you can buy a cheap ph meter I believe the one I bought I paid like 10 dollars for it U.S dollars, and it does tell you how wet your soil is and the amount of light all of which are useless the only thing I use is the ph setting. What you do is take some of your soil, but you say your outdoors so what you can do is, dig a little hole and pour some water in the hole, let the whole drain and place your soil ph probe into it wait about a minute then read the meter and see what it says it will also tell you how well your soil drains. When growing in soil marijuana like a ph of 6.8 but will grow in netural soil. just watch your plants and they will tell you what they need, best thing to do is grow organic. I use Earth juice and my plants love this shit. Hope this helps and welcome to the wonderful world of growing. Solar