Soil Reporting

The purpose of the soil report is give you a heads up on the amount of nutrients and organic matter your soil has as well as the percentage of sand, silt and clay. It's important to know these factors so you can figure out how much nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium,sulfur, and the amount of acidity your soil needs. While we plant, its important to note that some plants take away the nutrients in the soil while other plants add nutrients to the soil. During this report, we learned how to do the texture testing, also known as "feel method", which lets us know the type of soil we have. For example my group was able to find out that our soil was 10% sand and 20% sandy loam [you mean clay? What about other 70%?]. The PH [and nutrient] testing is when we when we take a soil sample and mix it with water, then we match the colors with the % lacking in P,N and K. This gives us an idea of how much blood meal as well as other macronutrients we need to add to our soil. The percentage in sand, silt and clay lets us know what our soil is lacking in, you are able to tell by looking at the different layers of the soil when it's in the cylinder.

On Friday, students were making more compost, which is a very important element for the soil, working on their management jobs, weeding around the farm and adding their amendments to their plant beds.—Hugo D. [with editor notes]