What is Meant by Soil 
THE EXPLANATION OF A MUCH USED BUT LITTLE UNDERSTOOD TERM 
HOW TO TELL WHAT KIND OF SOIL YOURS IS AND HOW TO TREAT IT 
BY Frances Duncan 
'C'OR gardening- purposes the earth’s crust has two layers — the 
top soil and the subsoil. 
Garden books will advise “clayey soil,” “loam,” “light sandy 
soil” and the like, and the would-be gardener looks at his patch — 
which to him is only plain “ground” — and is quite at loss to know 
its variety. Yet to^ attempt a gardeii with utter ignorance of the 
soil is like raising children with a cheerful indifference as to diet. 
Soil, after one gets a bit used to it, is vastly interesting. 
The portion of the earth’s crust which chiefly concerns the 
gardener is, as I have said, its two upper layers. Into the top 
layer, decaying wood, leaves and animal matter have been in¬ 
corporated, plough and harrow have broken it and the roots of 
plants can feel their way about and find something to eat. 
The next layer, the subsoil, has been but slightly affected by 
this process, and one of the great uses of the new farming is to 
deepen the top soil, extending it down into the subsoil and so 
enlarge the resources of the plants, for the depth of the top soil is 
usually the depth to which the land has been ploughed. 
There are four ingredients of soil: sand, clay, gravel and 
humus; and it is the proportion in which these are mixed that 
determines the kind of soil. 
THE INGREDIENTS Humus, which is greatly valued by 
OF SOIL plants and gardeners, is animal or vege¬ 
table matter so completely decayed that 
it is ripe and rich for plant food. Dark, black earth is sure to 
have plenty of humus in it. 
Sandy soil is light and crumbly, so that a handful of it slips 
through your fingers like granulated sugar — even when it is wet, 
it has no adhesiveness. Sandy soil holds water poorly, and for 
this reason bulbs are set on a cushion of sand to prevent their 
rotting: the water slips through the sand, the roots go down in 
search of it and the bulb itself keeps dry. 
Sandy soil is the boon of the early gardener; it is wai'mer, 
ready for ploughing weeks before clayey soil, excellent for all the 
early vegetables, for tea-roses, mignonette, bulbs, poppies, bush 
fruits and strawberries, but not good for oats, wheat, rye and 
deep-rooted grains. 
For improving sandy soil stable manure is one of the best mate¬ 
rials; it not only adds the valuable humus but improves the tex¬ 
ture and makes little reservoirs for water where before there 
was none. Leaf-mold is next best; it is possible to grow trees 
on a soil of pure sand and leaf-mold. The so-called green- 
manuring helps it, as do cover crops left on all winter and 
ploughed in in the spring. Because the defect of sandy soil is 
its leachiness (the extraordinary facility with which water will 
pass through it), gardeners treat it very differently from a clay 
soil. Instead of autumn ploughing, they plough in early spring, 
and give fertilizer and manure just before planting, lest the rains 
send this down to the subsoil before the plants can seize it. 
Clayey soil is stiff and sticky, and the most difficult to manage 
of all the soils. In the spring it has to be ploughed at the psycho¬ 
logical moment, or it will be lumpy and require much harrowing 
before it is in shape for sowing. It is stiff, cold; and the water 
doesn’t get through it easily, but lies in puddles on the surface. 
In a drought it bakes and cracks. And yet a clay soil has its 
advantages; on it can be raised strong, heavy crops—oats, wheat. 
hay, apples—and in the flower garden, dahlias, zinnias and hybrid 
perpetual roses. 
To improve a clayey soil, sand is excellent; gravel, peat, leaf- 
mold and even coal ashes will improve the texture. Leaf-mold 
and peat add richness as well as bettering the texture. Liming 
will make the soil of better quality; fall ploughing and a subse¬ 
quent leaving of the land to “weather” is excellent for a clayey 
soil. Manure may be carted out early and spread on the land to 
leach in slowly. 
A loam is a workable and, as far as plants are concerned, a 
most digestible mixture of clay, sand, silt and humus. A “gar¬ 
den loam” is a well-worked soil, in which all the ingredients are 
nicely balanced and, by years of cultivation, is well broken and 
easily assimilated. When one or another of the ingredients pre¬ 
dominates, it gives its name to the loam. Thus we have a sandy 
loam which, to be exact, is loam that has sixty to seventy per 
cent, of sand; if it has as much as seventy to eighty per cent., it 
is called a “light, sandy loam,” but still contains enough of other 
ingredients to modify the defects of a sandy soil and keep it still 
a “loam.” The endeavor of a gardener on sandy soil is, by 
manuring and cover crops, to convert it into a sandy loam. 
A clayey loam by the same token has sixty to seventy per cent, 
of clay; a heavy clay loam seventy to eighty per cent. 
Loams naturally have a wider repertoire of crops—they are 
“all-around” soils. They are easier for the inexpert gardener to 
handle than more positive soils; they can be “all things to all 
plants.” A loam will have sand enough for strawberries and yet 
clay enough for apple trees, and the best fertilizer for a loam soil 
depends upon which ingredient predominates and upon what you 
want to grow. Sometimes, as Dean Hole points out, a gardener’s 
salvation lies at his very door, and the very remedy his soil needs 
is near at hand; thus a muck swamp may not be far off from clay 
soil which needs its ameliorating power. 
Aside from the feel of it and the look of it, there are mechanical 
tests which are not so difficult to apply. 
First, get a fair sample of your soil 
ANALYZING THE from several different places ; say a quart. 
SOIL Weight this and put down the weight. 
Next put the soil in a pan at the back of 
the stove and let it stand until thoroughly dry; but it must not be 
allowed to burn. Weigh again, and the difference between this 
and the first weight is the amount of water the soil holds. 
Now put it in a hot oven for three or four hours; then weigh 
again. The humus will have been burnt, and the difference be¬ 
tween the second and third weights gives the amount- of humus. 
Now in your pan is clay, sand and silt. Put this soil in a 
wide-mouthed glass bottle or jar—a two-quart jar will do; a 
larger one is better. Fill it with water, and then shake it vio¬ 
lently. Then set it down on a table and watch. 
The sand or gravel, being heaviest, will settle first; next the 
silt, while the clay will remain in the water for hours. After a 
day or so look at your jar and you will see—not sharp divisions, 
but yet the different elements separated definitely enough to give 
you a fairly good idea of the proportions. Knowing this, one can 
go at one’s gardening intelligently, which is a great advantage to 
the garden! 
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