Any more or less knowledgeable gardener will tell you: to achieve success in the economic field, you need fertile soil. The better the quality of the soil on the site, the better the cucumbers will grow, and the envy of the neighbors will grow stronger at the sight of huge watermelons. Therefore, it is important to know at least in general terms what soil density is, to have an idea of its mechanical composition and humidity. The good news is that most of the soil properties in any garden plot can be determined by simple field methods.
Everything is relative. Therefore, we will begin our workshop with the fact that we will arm ourselves with soil samples from sites of various quality. Enough narrow three-centimeter strips of arbitrary length and depth about half a meter. It is on them that we will learn to determine the density of the soil and other characteristics.
All types of soil can be divided into sandy and clay. They are also called “light” and “heavy”. True, in their pure form they are rare, and mostly present in any area in harmonious symbiosis. What soil prevails in you is easy to find out: just look at its mechanical composition and determine the size of soil particles. All operations, for greater accuracy, it is desirable to carry out only on fresh slices.
Take a small lump of soil and rub it between your fingers. From what happened, fish out pebbles, plant roots and other relatively large particles. You should get a homogeneous earthen powder. After that, you need to add so much water to the paste to form, which can be easily crushed into a cake. The main thing at this stage is not to overdo it with water: the resulting mass should easily slide into a ball and back into a cake.
After that, in fact, you can begin to determine the density of the soil. There may be several options:
- The mass is loose, crumbles and forms with difficulty. So, in your area sandy soil predominates in large numbers.
- The mass is easily formed, effortlessly rolls into a ball in the palm of your hand, crumbles only for the third time. The density of the soil in this case is higher, and the composition of the soil is sandy loam. On this ground, you can plant almost everything - from potatoes and onions to apricots and peaches. An exception can be called unless some vegetable crops reacting to such a density of soil in different ways. For example, fiery red beans may not produce a very good crop, but there will be no problems with ordinary beans.
- The mass easily rolls into a ball or tortilla, at first it is easily formed into a thin sausage, and then it falls to pieces. In this case, your soil is light loamy. Or medium loamy, if the sausage can be bent into a ring, and small bends are present on its bends. Loams are also excellent for almost all types of vegetables and fruits.
- Finally, if a ring of soil mass is smooth, without kinks, and cracks appear only when repeated bending attempts are made, the density of the soil is high and the soil itself is clay. Subject to the competent processing of such a site, legumes, cabbage, spinach, berry trees and many other crops will grow well on it. Potatoes can also be grown on clay soil , provided there is a sufficient amount of fertilizing.
So, determining the soil compaction coefficient at your site will help to plan garden works so that they bring the greatest possible benefit.