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On top of Brush Mountain, Pa.
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Soil is a blend of chemical, physical and biological components.
Chemical: Your soil test will help guide you in deciding if the chemistry is off. Your test will show what the cation (nutrients with a positive charge) levels are and their ratio to each other (will require some education to understand if your cations are out of whack), and your TEC or CEC (Total or Cation exchange capacity). TEC basically tells you how big of a sponge is in your soil. A big sponge has more surface area to interact with everything to exchange or hold nutrients. It also would mean you need more nutrients to fill the sponge. The test will tell you if you are severely lacking or excessive in any element. It will take a little experience, research to find out the best way to supply what is missing or mitigate the excess. Note: there is new thinking that says soil life, when abundant and present and diverse, can supply whatever the plant needs, regardless of what the tests say.
Physical: Your eyes and intuition will tell you about the physical: How hard is it to dig? Standing water? Hard to wet? Doesn't hold any moisture? Bad smell? No soil aggregation around roots (soil aggregates look like worm castings or brown cottage cheese around root zone.)
Biological: Biological is a little trickier, as nobody really has it nailed down even close. Nor may we ever. It is beyond complex. I think soil is the final frontier. There are so many things interacting at once on so many order of magnitude and species. For soil biology the simple answer is to create an environment that fosters "biology" to do what it already knows how to do with interaction from our plant's roots. This means:
1. No tillage/disturbance of the soil which injects O2 into your soil and pushes microbial activity to burn up resources/organic matter. Also ruins soil structure (which is needed to create the environment to support diverse populations of "stuff".
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5/4/2020 5:44:13 PM
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