Know Thy Soil- Westvale Community Centre free workshop

Today I had the opportunity to attend a workshop at the Westvale Community Centre. The workshop was on getting to know your soil and was presented by Dan Palmer, director of VEG, very edible gardens and permaculture designer. It's the first workshop I've ever attended and I was happily surprised to see so many different people from different backgrounds and age. I have to say it was very informative and I only wish that we had more than 2 hours. I felt there was a lot of information that we needed to cover and it didn't leave much time to have a go at testing our soil samples which we were asked to bring.

This post will be a collection of written notes I made during the workshop.

Topics 
Soil chemistry

Soil structure
What is soil made of?
rock, minerals- sand silt or clay- needs to be a combination of all three to be good soil
organic matter- decomposing plant material, compost, leaves, manure
air/gas
water (water and air make up for 50% of soil
life, microorganisms, worms etc.

Different layers of soil
top soil the dark stuff at the top usually a few centimetres deep, then there's a change in colour and then you get down to the clay and rocky stuff, the further down you go the older the soil, could be millions of years old and not very fertile. Top soil stuff is more fertile. Never dig deep and mix the bottom stuff with the top because you'll just be taking yourself a million years or so back!

Soil composition tests

Jar fraction test - add some soil to a jar fill it with water and shake non-stop for 5 minutes let it sit for 24 hours and it should separate with heavy clay stuff on bottom and sandy stuff and hummus on top. See how much of each you have.

Ribbon test
get some wet soil and make a sausage with it see how far you can push it past your fingers that are holding it without it breaking. Will let you know if it has a lot of clay. should stick out about 2 centimetres if its good. Very clayie 5 cm.

Halo test
make a small ball of dirt and put it in a jar with water. let it set over night and see how it changes. if it disolves, stays the same or if it kind of crumbles and makes a pile at the bottom of the jar. Will let you know what type of clay you have.


Test for compactness 
coat hanger pushed into ground to see how hard it is to get it through, will let you know how hard your soil is and thus how hard its going to be for plants to grow their roots in the ground. You want it to be light and fluffy and not very hard to push the coat hanger in. Need to do this over the year because in summer and when there's not much rain its going to dry out and get harder. If your soil is hard its going to lead to water logging or have water run off it instead of penetrating.

Types of microbes are going to change when it is full of water and or totally compacted. they are going to be anaerobic not aerobic which you want. Usually this will mean you get bad smells, the smell being the vitamins and minerals going out into the air instead of staying in the ground where you want them. You can test this problem by pouring water over an area and watching what it does.


Soil Chemistry

Soil Biology