soil content sample - only saw 2 layers.

[andrew_ysk]

hii,

I did a soil content test using air jar method. on my veggie garden. and it comes out to be so.. but instead of 3 layers of sand, silk and clay, i only obtain 2 layers.. so how do i read it ? it the above layer is all silk ? or all clay ?

how to tell silk and clay apart ? i know silk is smooth.. but mine is smooth also... does it means that my garden (hard like rock when dry, soaking puddles of water when rain too much) is not clayish at all ? i thought my garden is all clay, that's why hard like crazy.

http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/636/ ... medium.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8387/d ... diumym.jpg




someone experience pls advice on my soil sample ? i wish to do it organic method to revitalize this soil for veggies planting.

thanks.

[rainbowgardener]

If you look particularly at the bottom picture, it looks like three layers to me, the middle layer being rougher than top or bottom.

The bottom layer will be the sand. Sand is the heaviest component, with biggest particles, so drops out of suspension first. The middle layer would be the silt (silk is a fabric) and the large top layer would be clay. The dark debris floating on top is the humus or organic component.

Clay and silt are both smooth but clay is clay-like, sticky. Squeeze a handful of clay and it forms a hard ball that will never come apart again. Silt may pack down hard when dry, but it falls apart a lot easier.

[andrew_ysk]

1st of all, thanks for replying.

I went back to the 2 pictures and paid lot of attention to it.
try to look at the photo below, i did some indication to it.



look at the black arrow that i pointed:
that's is the sand that settled within 1 minute.. i did the counting of timer . because one of the soil sampling website teaches me that the 1st minute settlement are sand.
then 1 hr for silt to settle, and the rest is clay.
so i believe the rough and not as rough portion below the black arrow line actually belong to the same type of content which settled within a minute, which is sand.
however the layer above i didn't do any counting of time, because it took quite some time to settle down.
so, the sand layer is below the black arrow pointer, and remaining the layer above the black pointer, which either silt or clay.. i can't tell.
that's my thought, that's why i said i only saw 2 layers instead of 3.
the smooth particle below black pointer could be just some portion of silt or clay that trapped in between sand particles.

what do you think ?

Andrew