That was a fun settling pattern near the bottom there. Yup, looks close just eyeballing it and no math before fully caffeinated. Looks like you'll be adding OM, but those are good fractions to start.

Dan

Michael

That is such a cool picture! I've marked it as a fave.

Sorry, can't offer much on the substance of your question. I'm more of a "rip the ground up with a cultivator, chuck the seeds in and fugetaboutit" kinda guy.

But I think I just might try that test (if the snow ever melts and the ground thaws out).

Lloyd

Does that layer seem to be over the 2 inch mark to anyone else, or just me? Maybe my eyes are worse than I thought.

Maybe Kimmsr should take a look at it and give an analysis.

Does that layer seem to be over the 2 inch mark to anyone else, or just me? Maybe my eyes are worse than I thought.

Close-ish, sure enough. But its still a sandy loam that needs OM, as there's very little darkening in the profile and the water is light-colored. That's a thin clay layer so your CEC is possibly low too, in addition to low WHC so Michael has some digging and turning to do. But its a decent soil to start with.

Dan

The math is a lot easier if you use 4 inches of soil in that 1 quart jar since all you need do is divide the level of each part of the soil by 4 to get the percentages. With 3 inches there are conversion factors that need to be used.
Sand, the largest and heaviest soil particle, will settle to the bottom while silt, lighter and smaller in size, will be next, and clay, the smallest and lightest, will be above those. However this is most useful for organic matter which will float on top and you have no organic matter in that soil sample.
What I see in your sample tells me that you have about equal amounts of sand and clay and a lot of silt. The level of sand is about 7/8ths of an inch, your silt is about 1-1/4 inch, and the clay is about 3/4 inch.

Interesting.

From here with no magnification I see two size classes of sand and two size classes of silt. Not knowing anything about the soil, I'd guess the bottom striated layer ending at ~7/8 has some sort of iron-rich mineralization in it, making it settle first, being heavier than quartzite-types. Around 1.75 inches we see interdigitating of silt and sand.

I'd be happy to be corrected, as I haven't done soil analysis outside of my/client's garden for well over a decade, and this largely on very old soils that I knew well, not these glaciated-types.

Dan

Sorry everyone, what you are seeing from the bottom to the 7/8" line is actually the reflection of a wood grain desk. LOL Sorry, guess I should have mentioned that!

Since taking the photo, I have had another 1/4" settle, which is probably 1/8" clay, and 1/8" OM.

haha - funny. I should say my Red Wings sweatshirt is reflecting on the screen tinging the bottom layer red and making me think of iron and glaciers...

Nonetheless, still looks from here like sandy loam with very little OM and the other stuff I said upthread.

Dan