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Get to Know Your Soils

We read a lot about soil health and how following the five soil health principles can maintain or improve soil health. But soils vary a great deal from place to place and to be truly successful, it’s important to know what you’ve got to start with at your place. To get you going, here are five articles that can help you and soil get better acquainted.

First, there’s the color of your soil which tells you a lot about the organic matter and how your climate affects it.

Soil Color Describes Your Climate

Next, take a look at it’s texture and pH.

What You Can Tell by Looking At – And Touching – Your Soil

Can you tell if your soil is healthy? And why is pH and it’s relationship to free aluminum so important?

Give Your Soil a Physical

And while we’re talking about soil organic matter, here’s what some recent research tells us.

Understanding the Two Sides to Soil Organic Matter Can Help Us Improve Soil Health

Finally, here’s a great tool for getting acquainted with your soils and what they can do.

It’s the Web Soil Survey, an online tool that shows you what your soils are and even gives estimates of how much forage they can grow, what kinds of crops might be successful here, and much, much more.

What Are Your Soils Capable Of?

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Kathy Voth
Kathy Vothhttps://onpasture.com
I am the founder, editor and publisher of On Pasture, now retired. My career spanned 40 years of finding creative solutions to problems, and sharing ideas with people that encouraged them to work together and try new things. From figuring out how to teach livestock to eat weeds, to teaching range management to high schoolers, outdoor ed graduation camping trips with fifty 6th graders at a time, building firebreaks with a 130-goat herd, developing the signs and interpretation for the Storm King Fourteen Memorial trail, receiving the Conservation Service Award for my work building the 150-mile mountain bike trail from Grand Junction, Colorado to Moab, Utah...well, the list is long so I'll stop with, I've had a great time and I'm very grateful.

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