soil

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it's early morning and i'm watching a jar full of muddy water slowly settle into layers, kind of like jello 1-2-3 from my childhood. what i'm doing is testing my soil to see what it's made of. soil is made of three different sized particles: sand (coarse), silt (medium) and clay (fine), which ideally should be in the proportions 40% sand, 40% clay, 20% silt for cultivation of most plants. it's clear i've got a lot of sand in the mix. the silt and clay are going to take a couple more days to settle out.

this test is simple and kind of fun. you go out and dig about 6" into the soil you want to check out, take about a cup of material, sift it and let it dry, making sure to get everything through the sifter except organic material and rocks. then you put an inch or two (make sure you do this accurately) into a jar. on top of this put a tablespoon of automatic dishwasher powder to help the soil settle. fill the jar with water, shake three minutes, and let it sit. the sand will settle in a minute or so, the silt in several hours and the clay over several days, or perhaps never. the different kinds of soil will be pretty clear and banded. measure these bands and take them as a percentage of the original height and you'll have a rough estimate of soil composition.

i also dug out an old soil testing kit and checked three locations around my property to see how the soil stacked up. i really am not sure this test works (i'm sending soil samples to the university of vermont extension service tomorrow for a real lab analysis), but my cheapo home kit tells me that my soil pH is about 6.5 (okay), there's no nitrogen (bad), there's lots of phosphorus (ok), and no potassium (bad). i think this essentially means no organic matter in the soil. the plants thriving in this poor soil include ferns, raspberries, blackberries and some other tall flowering things. my newbie analysis is that i need to till in quite a bit of organic matter before i start planting.