No I'm not adversarial to grazing at all! What I was saying is that this was a hay field and was not grazed or managed at all for a long time. The trick with this site also is that it is half heavy clay and half sandy loam. Also I was showing the client some basic tricks to assess her soil not giving a training on it and not actually even trying to make a video, she wanted to record it and post it so we did. What I was saying about plant health is that you can't assume that most people k ow what plants they are even looking at in a field so the crumb test is a simpler way for them to get a feel for the soil when starting out. O rarely need to do that as I can see the pioneers, or nitrogen fixers, or droit or flood plants . But so few can read this from the plantscapes
He kinda sorta did it right. You gotta hydrate the soil enough to form a ball in your hand. The key is to add enough water that the ball can form and not fall apart but not too much water that it's any mushier than something like playdoh. Like he said, if the soil is a pure sand, the ball will not form. You should be able to smash the soil ball in your hand and not see any large cracks for either. Let the ball set for 5 mins to let the clay absorb the water. Comeback and rehydrate the ball to the appropriate moisture level. This will only take a few drops of water. Next you will roll the ball into a "turd" like shape and perform the ribboning technique as shown in the video. Look up a soil texture flow sheet and follow it, a picture of the soil texture triangle would help as well. The soil in the video did not form a ribbon because it was not wet enough. If it was a sandy clay loam it would ribbon fairly well. Not ribboning at all would make it a loamy sand. Like he said, could be sandy loam. Compaction does not always necessarily equate to soil structure. That would be like a sub angular blocky breaking to single grain lol. The stickiness however like he said, is very much due to the organic matter in the soil and possibly some clay it sounds like. With sand content like that, they're doing pretty good!
I didn't mention hydration since my sample was hydrated, not sure if you could feel that through the video.. at first based on texture and grit and stickyness I said sandy clay laom , but date my failed Robben test you can hear me make my final assessment as a pure sandy loam. Ive been doing this for 15 years but thanks for trying to correct me based on what you saw. Next time watch till the end.
you mean if the sample is dry? it needs to have some moisture to get the clumping effect and the ribben if your doing a full ribben test, but that wasnt my goal only to guage life in the soil.
the vegetation is an indicator of soil life so you can actually see the soil is alive without any digging + the soil test will provide psychological comfort however a soil test is almost irrelevant to maintaining ground covers - do a test - so what - bit like oscar wildes "worth seeing but not worth going to see" quote -assuming now land use is grazing ? management of ground covers is the crucial thing to understand - unless you intend to cultivate
it's not only soil life though, the test is there to also figure out what is the predominant component of the soil mixture, you can only find close too 100% sand on the beach, and 100% silt at the bottom of a pond/reservoir, it is valuable to know what soil type is dominant in your soil (sand, silt or clay) sand is big and lets water through easily, silt is intermediate while clay is the tiniest of particles and can hold on to water well, but also can become hydrophobic when completely dried out.
@@oloplyflapdar7384 take a shovel and dig = then keep digging = subsoil is as important as topsoil = not difficult to determine soil type by observation = the stuff here above is obviously sand = you then have variations in sand = some sand is classified as acid sulfate for example = some plant species will do better in this sand - some worst = the veg here looks impressive = however revert to overgrazing or excessive cultivation and it will go into decline rapidly = much faster than alluvial soils = sand soil takes longer to build organic matter
In my experience i have seen many healthy landscapes of plants that look healthy and only when you look at the soil can you tell how it was in the past. many fields look fine and then you see soil that has no presence of biology or organic matter, and in fact the healthy plants that where observed are all pioneer repair species that thrive in depleted degraded soils. this is not a NPK test which i do agree is useless. I'm not sure what your experience is with living soil science or soil ecology but your statement is not accurate. dont assume and then bash based on what you assume, there is no grazing, this is an abandoned field being assessed for its potential. Also we are not trying to maintain cover crop, there is no cover crop on this field only remnant from field hay seeding that was last done 30 years ago, no intention to cultivate ( till ) if that is what you mean, there is no design for this property at all at this time. we are in the observation phase.
@@P3Permaculture 30 years got it - you can see the groundcover is magnificent - if look at a field and think it "looks fine" and it isnt then you may lack experience. it is what it is - all you can do is add selected amendments/mineral if viable and manage what grows on top. you can see this paddock has been well managed/grazed last 30 years otherwise it would not be so healthy and abundant. if it stopped raining for 12 months your visual appraisal would be different "not much life here". sand country has lower moisture holding capacity. it degrades faster than alluvial soil. so you need to manage sand country differently to heavy soil types. management of groundcovers is more important to know and understand - which at this point in time you might know or not know = i dont know what you know about management, yet you appear adversarial to grazing.
this is a basic crumb test, not a soil composition test, it give us a glimps into the health of the soil life and a direction of the composition, to know composition a jar settle test is required , in this case i was not trying to assess composition rather trying ot understand how depleted the field was as it was in hay production for years, (no grazing animals except wild) and no manure being brought back so largely an extractive management. All i wanted to know was if their was still any life in the soil.
This is a super practical video!! Thanks!!
Great vid. New sub
It's a clip from the new content being added to the online Permaculture design course. I'm glad you found it useful.
🙏🏽 Thank you! Great stuff
Great video, I found it very interesting. Thank you for sharing 😊
thanks for your positive support
No I'm not adversarial to grazing at all! What I was saying is that this was a hay field and was not grazed or managed at all for a long time. The trick with this site also is that it is half heavy clay and half sandy loam. Also I was showing the client some basic tricks to assess her soil not giving a training on it and not actually even trying to make a video, she wanted to record it and post it so we did. What I was saying about plant health is that you can't assume that most people k ow what plants they are even looking at in a field so the crumb test is a simpler way for them to get a feel for the soil when starting out. O rarely need to do that as I can see the pioneers, or nitrogen fixers, or droit or flood plants . But so few can read this from the plantscapes
He kinda sorta did it right. You gotta hydrate the soil enough to form a ball in your hand. The key is to add enough water that the ball can form and not fall apart but not too much water that it's any mushier than something like playdoh. Like he said, if the soil is a pure sand, the ball will not form. You should be able to smash the soil ball in your hand and not see any large cracks for either. Let the ball set for 5 mins to let the clay absorb the water. Comeback and rehydrate the ball to the appropriate moisture level. This will only take a few drops of water. Next you will roll the ball into a "turd" like shape and perform the ribboning technique as shown in the video. Look up a soil texture flow sheet and follow it, a picture of the soil texture triangle would help as well.
The soil in the video did not form a ribbon because it was not wet enough. If it was a sandy clay loam it would ribbon fairly well. Not ribboning at all would make it a loamy sand. Like he said, could be sandy loam.
Compaction does not always necessarily equate to soil structure. That would be like a sub angular blocky breaking to single grain lol. The stickiness however like he said, is very much due to the organic matter in the soil and possibly some clay it sounds like. With sand content like that, they're doing pretty good!
I didn't mention hydration since my sample was hydrated, not sure if you could feel that through the video.. at first based on texture and grit and stickyness I said sandy clay laom , but date my failed Robben test you can hear me make my final assessment as a pure sandy loam. Ive been doing this for 15 years but thanks for trying to correct me based on what you saw. Next time watch till the end.
How would a drought effect the soil test? Make it clump together less?
you mean if the sample is dry? it needs to have some moisture to get the clumping effect and the ribben if your doing a full ribben test, but that wasnt my goal only to guage life in the soil.
@ Ok. Thanks.
the vegetation is an indicator of soil life so you can actually see the soil is alive without any digging + the soil test will provide psychological comfort however a soil test is almost irrelevant to maintaining ground covers - do a test - so what - bit like oscar wildes "worth seeing but not worth going to see" quote -assuming now land use is grazing ? management of ground covers is the crucial thing to understand - unless you intend to cultivate
it's not only soil life though, the test is there to also figure out what is the predominant component of the soil mixture, you can only find close too 100% sand on the beach, and 100% silt at the bottom of a pond/reservoir, it is valuable to know what soil type is dominant in your soil (sand, silt or clay) sand is big and lets water through easily, silt is intermediate while clay is the tiniest of particles and can hold on to water well, but also can become hydrophobic when completely dried out.
@@oloplyflapdar7384 take a shovel and dig = then keep digging = subsoil is as important as topsoil = not difficult to determine soil type by observation = the stuff here above is obviously sand = you then have variations in sand = some sand is classified as acid sulfate for example = some plant species will do better in this sand - some worst = the veg here looks impressive = however revert to overgrazing or excessive cultivation and it will go into decline rapidly = much faster than alluvial soils = sand soil takes longer to build organic matter
In my experience i have seen many healthy landscapes of plants that look healthy and only when you look at the soil can you tell how it was in the past. many fields look fine and then you see soil that has no presence of biology or organic matter, and in fact the healthy plants that where observed are all pioneer repair species that thrive in depleted degraded soils. this is not a NPK test which i do agree is useless. I'm not sure what your experience is with living soil science or soil ecology but your statement is not accurate. dont assume and then bash based on what you assume, there is no grazing, this is an abandoned field being assessed for its potential. Also we are not trying to maintain cover crop, there is no cover crop on this field only remnant from field hay seeding that was last done 30 years ago, no intention to cultivate ( till ) if that is what you mean, there is no design for this property at all at this time. we are in the observation phase.
@@P3Permaculture 30 years got it - you can see the groundcover is magnificent - if look at a field and think it "looks fine" and it isnt then you may lack experience. it is what it is - all you can do is add selected amendments/mineral if viable and manage what grows on top. you can see this paddock has been well managed/grazed last 30 years otherwise it would not be so healthy and abundant. if it stopped raining for 12 months your visual appraisal would be different "not much life here". sand country has lower moisture holding capacity. it degrades faster than alluvial soil. so you need to manage sand country differently to heavy soil types. management of groundcovers is more important to know and understand - which at this point in time you might know or not know = i dont know what you know about management, yet you appear adversarial to grazing.
What about silt content?
this is a basic crumb test, not a soil composition test, it give us a glimps into the health of the soil life and a direction of the composition, to know composition a jar settle test is required , in this case i was not trying to assess composition rather trying ot understand how depleted the field was as it was in hay production for years, (no grazing animals except wild) and no manure being brought back so largely an extractive management. All i wanted to know was if their was still any life in the soil.
pure sand will bind if there is sufficient humus and moisture
pure sand as i mention in the clip is pure sand and has no organic matter therefore it will not bind,