What does the soil feel like? Grab a wad of it in your fist. What do you feel? Is it packed, hard, crumbly, tacky, or loose? What color is it? Black, red, gray, blue, or white. Is it loose or packed under your feet? These are my initial thoughts on sorting texture.
Texture refers to the soil's proportions of sand, silt, and clay. The soil should be moist to best get a read on this. You can see sand, silt is like flour, and clay is slick and makes small clods.
If you think about plants growing in this media, imagine with me for a minute roots growing in sugar, flour, whipped eggs, and chocolate. Sand is sugar, silt is flour, clay is the egg, and chocolate is the finest clay. Now imagine what plants would like fudge, cakes, or cookies. If you add coconut flakes, nut pieces, or crumbled candy bar type ingredients. That is the organic matter. Organic matter lossens the soil, allows permeability of air and water, and allows root hairs to work their way into the media.
Soils generally can be clumped into the categories of,
1.Sandy= Bouncy balls= Sand
2. Loam= Bouncy balls+ Basketballs+ Marbles (loam and clay respectively)
3. Fine= Marbles= clay
Course, Moderately Course, Medium, Moderately Fine, and Fine
Add enough organic matter and you can grow on top of a rock, so don't get overly wrapped up in the detail. Reflect on the periodic table and imagine what can come to which soil particles, and then imagine what can happen if you increase surface area with organic matter. No site is perfect and most can be adjusted and worked with according to cropping or function. Surface area+ air+ moisture+ biologicals= healthy yield. The system works with out you. Enjoy.
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