Soil Types and Soil Preparation for Your Land How to Get The Best Out Of Your Land

For many people who work outdoors on their land, the feel of the soil between their fingers is enough to give them a feeling of euphoria and satisfaction. This book is going to tell you all about how you can get the best of your land through knowing more about the types of soils, and soil preparation.

When you learn more about the types of soils, especially in your area, you can go out, and look at those soils and classify them accordingly. After that, you are going to know all about their plus and minus points and how best you can enrich the soil, naturally, and get the best out of this land, given to us by nature, by right of inheritance.

The soil is the storage house of mineral nutrients and water used by higher plants as well as the home of their roots. Therefore, it is necessary for you to know all about the physical and chemical composition of the soil with regards to crop production.

The chemical composition can be changed by adding fertilizers and other materials, and to some extent by tillage, proper drainage, and other methods which are going to favor soil aeration. The physical condition can be changed by drainage, by tillage, by plowing, by incorporating rich organic matter, and by use of lime and other materials.

Unless the soil is in good physical condition, you are not going to get large yields. That is the reason why so many gardeners, as well as farmers, get disheartened, when they find their yields, not up to their expectations. What they may have overlooked is that they have done absolutely nothing in order to enrich the soil.

So if you are not feeding mother Earth with rich fertilizer or giving her enough water, and leaving it to the rains to nourish the ground and water it, and leaving the land to overflow with weeds because you could not be bothered to take care of the land, how would you expect her to give you abundantly of her bounty?

Also, good natural fertilizer practice, good seed, and the best of care is not going to ensure success unless the soil is already of good texture and is well prepared before hand.

So this book is now going to tell you all about the different kinds of soils, soil classification, and how best you can take full advantage of rich soil in order to get a good and fruitful harvest year after year after year.

There are two general kinds of soils – mineral soil and organic. Organic soil is normally called muck or peat. In fact, we use the word muck more as a rude epithet nowadays, even though it has long been in use it as a gardening term, describing rich, bountiful, organic soil, even if it is a little bit muddy and tending to stick to your boots.

Only a geologist can go into all the classical ramifications and divisions of mineral soils. However the most useful classification for an average reader like you and I, is the one based on the general characteristics which are necessary for plant production. In technical publications, which are really scary in dealing with soils, the term, soil series, soil types, and soil classes or even textural grades, are in common usage, well able to scare and daunt the most intrepid average soul like you and I.
Nevertheless, as I am writing this book, which even I can understand, being a totally average layman, without any scary technical terms, here is some information which you may find interesting.

Any type of soil, which has relatively uniform profile characteristics is going to represent a particular soil type. Any particular soil of a particular series is designated by its textural name. That means you may have heard of sandy loam, clay loam, or silt loam. The series name is added before the textural name.

Thus the soil type name is going to be made up of two parts. The first part is going to be the series – sandy, clay, or silt – and the second part is going to be the individual within the series. That means when anybody is talking about Dunkirk clay loam, or Norfolk sandy loam, you will understand that the loam at Dunkirk or in Norfolk is either made up of large amounts of clay, or it is quite sandy in composition. Thus, the first word in each of these names is going to designate the series and the rest are going to designate the textural class or grade. Taken together, they are going to make up the name of type of soil.
Soil Class

The soil class or the textural grade is the classification normally based on the texture. Texture actually is a term used to indicate the fineness or the coarseness of the soil. We have a tendency to rub a handful of soil, between our fingers, whenever we are ready to plant something. Instinct tells us that the soil is smooth, it is course, it is grainy, it is sandy, it is fine, it is gravelly, or it has a lot of clay particles in it.
Soil particles are normally separated into seven different sizes and textures ranging from fine gravel to coarse sand, medium sand, fine sand, very fine sand, silt, and clay. Fine gravel is going to be -1 mm and clay is .005 mm and below.

Muck or peat soils are mainly composed of plant material in various stages of the composition. That is why since ancient times, the soil of Bogs and marshes, where there is plenty of vegetative matter decomposing is considered to be the best soil available to you to keep your land healthy.

The profile of such soil is characterized by layers differing in the nature of the original plant material and the stage of decomposition. These terms, Muck and peat are often used indiscriminately to describe soils that are composed largely of organic material and matter.

Tillage
Proper soil preparation is going to consist of drainage, plowing, harrowing, tillage, dragging, and rolling. For most vegetable crops, good drainage, and good preparation is essential. For planting small seeds, it is important to have the surface fairly smooth and free of clods, pebbles, and trash. This is necessary so that you can plant at a uniform depth and have a good coverage of the seed.

In fact, seed drills are going to work best when the soil surface is level and smooth.

This book has given you plenty of information on different soil types, and how you can prepare the soil properly in order to grow crops and vegetables. Many of these implements which I have told you in this book are normally used as farming equipment, but even if you do not have a large farm, you would like information about these particular implements of agriculture. Especially when they are an part of plowing, soil preparation and other agricultural techniques, which have been used by mankind down the ages and are still being used.

Even today, whenever one has a crop to grow, of any kind, one immediately begins to think about the land which has to be prepared, before hand with organic fertilizer, the soil has to be broken up, and the ground made ready through plowing to break up the clods of soil, and to make furrows in the land.
So get ready for planting your vegetable crops, in order to get a good harvest,

Live Long and Prosper!