Understanding Soil

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Here's a bit of a synopsis, for those who want to read along:

Understanding Soil

This excerpt covers:
What color is soil?  
What do different colors of soil indicate?
What does soil smell indicate?
How can you test soil drainage?
Indicators of aerobic/anaerobic soil activity
Soil texture, including:
   - particle size
         - Loamy, good texture forms a ball but remains crumbly, feels slippery, like talcum powder (silt also feels slippery)
         - Sandy soil, when you add water, the ball falls apart and your hands get dirty, and feels gritty
         - Clay soil, when you add water and form a ball, it sticks together - even when thrown against a wall (editorial note - choose your wall carefully) and feels sticky
   - Most soils are a mixture of sand, silt, and clay
   - Most earth has layers of various types of soil
Biological activity tests:
Dig a hole, 1x1.5 feet and count your earthworms.  You should have 6-10 during growing season (temperate)
Examine how long it takes biological material to decompose.  Faster means more active and diverse microbial activity
Check out the whole Garden Master Course here: garden master course

Boy was this clip super interesting and informative! Thanks!

Great taster video! I've shared it on Facebook. Looking forwards to understanding my soil better this year!

Well this is some perfect timing.  I was going to post a question to my fave permies today about soil findings.  Building my first garden in my new (first) house and have a hillock out back where i want to build my hugel bed...I've been excavating the pile of rocks that I now realize apparently created the hill and have noticed only 2 earthworms in 2 weeks worth of digging.  After watching this, I'm going to go out and pay more attention to the soil today...but...back to the worms.  I have only seen thousands of empty snail shells and a million cockroaches, maybe a hundred rollie pollies.  Once I hit some black ants, but not many.  2 spiders.  Absolutely zero other bugs or critters.  I've been curious if this is just because the soil is still cold here (central Oklahoma) and I'm not deep enough yet, or if this is an indicator of some big imbalance in my soil.  I'm taking soil samples in for testing this week.  The previous owner (who was here for 21 years) said the hill was there when he bought from the original owners (and most of the stone matches what the house is made of so I think it was leftovers)...and he said he never really did any maintenance on the hill - it is seriously overgrown with some as yet to be identified bushes of which I will need to extricate the  30-40 stumps, I guess?!  Anyway - thanks for sharing this.  And if anyone reads this and has thoughts for me...always appreciate you sharing your time, experience and wisdom!  Happy day!

I'm a soil nerd. Love this video. Very excited.

Michele Morken, I see that you are in central Oklahoma and if so it's possible that you are on the prairie. Please know that much of the prairie does not have earthworms and that is how it is supposed to be. I am on the prairie and have been digging for 3 years and haven't found a worm yet. I finally read something ( sorry I can't remember where) about this.

denise ra wrote:Michele Morken, I see that you are in central Oklahoma and if so it's possible that you are on the prairie. Please know that much of the prairie does not have earthworms and that is how it is supposed to be. I am on the prairie and have been digging for 3 years and haven't found a worm yet. I finally read something ( sorry I can't remember where) about this.

Whoa...are you kidding me?  I have never heard that - amazing to know!  I will have to read up on that.  Thank you so much for taking the time to mention!