My Soil Is Crap, Part II
Last month in my blog My Soil Is Crap Part I, I tried to dispel the myth that you can diagnose soil problems by just looking at your soil. While the color of a soil does impart some diagnostic qualities, most soils are not easily analyzed without a soils test. A complete soils test will give a textural analysis including useful information about water holding capacity and a variety of chemical analyses. Soil reaction or pH is an essential component of any soil test (and is often unreliable in home soil test kits). Soil reaction affects the availability of plant required mineral salts. Most soil tests give a measure of the salinity sometimes call TDS, or total dissolved salts (solids). Finally specific mineral content of soil is usually analyzed – in particular macronutrients are usually quantified. With these data a great deal can be predicted about the “grow-ability” of your soil. Soil tests can also help guide attempts to modify soils. The biology of soils is not easily or routinely analyzed through soils tests.
Soil Harm
Soil can be “harmed” in several ways–making it less able to grow plants. Or another way to look at this is that soil can be enhanced in several ways to grow plants better. First let’s examine the harm. Soil can be physically harmed by tilling with a rototiller. Tillage destroys structure and the natural clods and peds that form over time because of a soil’s innate qualities. Structured soils support plants and help prevent disease. Tilled soils will in time resume their native structure, but the amount of time required is quite variable depending on soil type. Soil structure can also be squished– this is compaction…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
