Wealden Times | WT166 | December 2015 | Interiors supplement inside

Know your soil
Understanding your soil will give you an indication of
what is going to thrive in your plot. There are several
types of soil, derived from tiny particles of the rocks from
which they’re formed: sand, clay, silt, chalk and peat
being the main ones. Then there’s the acidity level which,
combined with soil type, will determine which plants will
happily grow in the space. You can buy soil-testing kits
that show how acid or alkaline your soil is (most hovers
around the neutral mark), but you can easily test soil with
your hands, or a jam jar filled with soil and water:
Soil Test – hand
You don’t need a soil-testing kit necessarily, although this will
give you a good idea of the soil’s pH (how acidic/alkaline
it is). Go out to your plot and take a small trowelful of soil
from just under the surface. Take a handful and squeeze it,
then open out your hand again. If the soil stays in a ball, or
feels sticky to the touch, it is clay. If, on the other hand, the
handful feels gritty – you can easily see the particles – and it
won’t stay in a ball, even when wet, then it is sandy. The holy
grail of soil is loam, which when squeezed will almost form a
ball and then crumble nicely into a heap again. These are the
three main types of soil, but yours could also be silty (silky,
almost soapy to the touch) or peaty (spongy and fibrous).
Soil Test – with a jam jar
Half fill a jam jar with a sample of soil, taken again from just
under the surface. Fill to near the top with water and screw
the lid back on tightly. Shake the jar thoroughly and leave it
on the side for an hour or two. When you go back to look
at it, it should have separated into layers, with the heaviest,
largest particles at the bottom and the finest, smallest nearer
the top. If there’s a lot of stuff floating on top of the water,
that’s called humus (no, not the Greek dip). Humus is mainly
decomposed plant and animal waste and, if there’s lots of it,
be pleased – it’s a good sign. Humus helps the fertility and the
structure of the soil. Sandy soils will have a large proportion
of big particles (the bottom layer) and clay soils will have
a bigger top layer. The loam will be roughly even. If your
jar still looks cloudy, or there doesn’t seem to be much of a
bottom layer at all, then the soil is silty – which means that
the particles are very fine. If the water is chock-full of floating
debris, it may be peaty (do a pH test to see how acidic it is).
137 www.wealdentimes.co.uk
PetalsForPlantsWT166.indd 1 10/11/2015 10:01