[Eli Oliver]
Okay, so I'm Eli Oliver.
I started at USU last semester, so this is my second semester.
First year.
I'm originally from Tennessee.
From a middle of nowhere town,
about an hour and a half east of Nashville.
I graduated from UT Knoxville.
Bachelor's in soil science.
Let's see, okay.
Just to show,
I kind of have some idea of what, I know what I'm doing.
I was on the UT solar judging team from spring 2017 to fall 2019,
and within that span, we were the regional
and national champion team in 2017, 2018,
and I was the first place individual at the 2019 regionals.
And I'll argue with some people that we would have won
nationals in 2020 had they not canceled it due to Covid.
Okay, you can switch to the next one.
Okay so before I go off telling you how to texture and what it entails, I'm,
basically just kind of go over why we care about texture.
It's one of the most basic soil properties, but it influences
so many other things.
It's really good to know what you have
before you go adding things to it or amending your soil.
Some of the main things texture effects is water storage,
drainage and water infiltration.
And just kind of explain this.
If you have a sandy soil, you're going to
irrigate at a lesser amount, but you're going to do it
at a more frequent interval.
And, with clays, you're going to irrigate for a longer amount of time,
but you're not going to do it as frequently.
So you'll do it for just 1 or 2 days, compared to maybe
3 or 4 days for a sandy soil, or depending on what you need.
It also affects the amount of aeration in the soil
and along with the ease of working the soil up.
If you have a real high clay percentage soil, you're going to have a hard time
tilling it up, if you need to, especially if it starts to dry out.
And it also affects your soil fertility
because, all of your nutrient holding capacity is going to come from your clay.
It's got the, the largest amount of surface area per unit volume.
So that's where all your nutrient holding capacity comes from.
And there's really not any on the silt and sand sized particles and,
it also lets you know what kind of topsoil you want to use.
Ideally, you want to use an equal mixture of about the three particle sizes.
And we'll get more into that of what that is.
And what constitutes this.
But you want a good mixture of each one
if you're ordering in topsoil to use.
And you can switch to the next one now.
Okay so,
there's three particle sizes that make up soil texture.
Sand, silt and clay.
Sand is 0.08in to .002in.
And sorry for the
real small numbers on here, this is usually in metric.
So I converted it over to inches.
Sand is going to be the only particle size visible to the naked eye.
The other two, you need microscopes to see, and clay,
you're going to need a real strong microscope to see,
the individual particles, as you can see, silt is
0.002 to eight to the negative fifth in.
And clay is everything less than eight to the negative fifth in diameter.
And I'm not including rock fragments in this, but rock fragment
is anything bigger than the sand sized particles.
And here's a visual representation,
so you can see each size compared to each other.
And this is in metric, but you can still see
how much bigger sand is than the other two and how small clay is.
And something to note here.
Clay isn't really the shape it is in this diagram.
It's more of a platy-
shaped particle, and the other two are more spherical.
And that, again, ties into some of the surface area
properties of the clays.
If you want to switch.
Okay so just some of the goals for today.
I'm going to try to teach everybody how to texture by feel.
And doing that, we'll learn how to estimate
the particle percentages of your sand, silt and clay.
And then I'll show you how to determine the texture class of your soil
and what that might mean for you.
Okay, so before I get into the different texture classes and how to do it
I want to tell you how each particle size will feel.
So you can kind of have
a general idea of what you're doing before we actually texture it.
So clay is going to be real sticky.
As you get higher amounts, it's going to feel
real similar to modeling clay or playdo.
And if you let it dry out, it's going to get real hard.
But the main thing to take from clay is it's going to stick to your fingers
and it's going to feel like modeling clay or playdo.
Sand.
It's going to feel real coarse and gritty at high amounts.
And if it's primarily sand,
you're going to have a real loose feeling soil
and it's not going to form together as well as one with clay will.
And silt's kind of hard to describe.
Most people,
when they're texturing they go off of the other two and just
subtract what that would be from 100 to get your silt.
But, the way to describe silt, it's smooth but not sticky.
And I think,
when you have a high amount of silt, it almost kind of feels like flour
or things like that.
It's not going to stick to you, but it's not coarse like sand is.
You can switch.
Okay so, here's a diagram.
I'll go more into this on the next slide.
But this is just showing you,
once you go to estimate all three of your particle sizes,
this is telling you, what texture class you have,
the ideal soil and one you want to
kind of pay attention to if you have to order topsoil in, is your loam.
And that's kind of the equal percentage of all three.
And that's going to give you the greatest,
I guess, balance of water-holding capacity and drainage.
If you had a clay soil, it's going to hold the water.
It's going to hold more water than a
sandy soil will, but it's not going to drain as fast either.
And you might run into drainage issues.
While sandy soil,
it's going to drain real good, but it won't hold it much either.
So ideally you want either a loam, silt loam,
or maybe a sandy loam too.
And, this is just showing you
how to use the triangle.
If you're by yourself, you can follow this link.
This is going to go to the NRCS Soil Texture Calculator.
And at this website you can just type in what you think each
particle size percentage is and it'll tell you.
But, I'll show you how to, use this triangle.
So what we'll do, we'll start with sand percentages.
So we'll go to 40% sand and Melony,
if you click these, it'll bring up arrows I have on the triangle.
So we'll go 40% sand and then silt will be on the right side going down.
So 40% silt.
It'll look like that.
And then 20% clay.
Clay is going to go on the left and just go sideways.
So you get that, and that'll leave you with the loam.
And we'll go through the other two real fast just so everybody
gets a good idea.
One with 50% sand, 10% silt,
and 40% clay is going to leave you with the sandy clay.
And by the way, that's one of the hardest textures to do.
It just feels so weird.
And, finally, one with 15% sand, 55% silt,
and 30% clay is going to leave you with the silty clay loam.
And again, if you,
find this too confusing to read, I know it takes some getting used to at first.
You can always just go to this website, especially as we go to do your own later,
and you could just type in what you think it is
and it'll automatically give you the
particle size class for it.
So this right here,
don't worry about this.
I just wanted to show you, this is the flow chart.
The Natural Resource Conservation Service
has put together when determining texture.
I'll go through all this step by step.
But the only thing I think you really need to pay attention to, and I'll,
I'll remind you of that is, there's a, in the middle,
there's, different links for the ribbon and I'll go into that.
And that's kind of how you can estimate your clay percentage
and go off of your texture based from there.
But we'll get into that after this.
Okay so the first thing you want to do when texturing,
you're going to want a decent amount of soil on your hand.
I think the guidelines from that starts about 25g.
You really just want to fill your palm up.
And yours isn't going to look like this here.
This is soil I had that I ground up for analysis, and it's real dry.
So that's why it looks the way it does. But,
you just want a good amount in your hand
and, what you want to do, you want to wet it the soil until it's moist.
And you don't want it too wet, what you want,
you kind of want it to have a shine on the surface.
If you have too much water, it's going to cause the soil to fall apart.
And you're going to have to either start again or add more dry soil to it to
get it to take.
But if you don't add enough water, you won't be able to feel,
or adequately feel all the different particle sizes, and you can't
get an accurate texture by feel.
So, you kind of want it to have a shine.
Let me see if I can get it here.
I don't know if you can see that here, but that's about how wet you want it.
I can work it up real good
and feel everything right now.
So what we're going to do after we get it wet.
If I'm going to fast on any of this, just slow me down too.
But, we're going to try to form a ball in your hands.
And only soils with high sand percentages,
that's the only one will not be able to form a ball.
So automatically, if you can't form a ball with the soil,
you know you have just sand.
And a good way to tell, or pickup on clay content early on.
It's going to feel very firm when working the soil into a ball.
If you have high amounts of clay.
And after this, we're going to try to form a ribbon from the ball.
And I'll go into that more later.
So this is what, ideally what your ball should look like.
Again you want a decent amount.
Notice the shine on here.
So that's kind of how wet you want it.
And just try to form the ball in your hands.
Again, if you don't have a lot of sand, it won't be able to form a ball.
But only, the only one not able to form a ball is straight sand.
Even on the triangle early, there's this sandy loam category
which is close to straight sand but it's, it should still be able to form a ball.
So I don't think anybody here will have straight sand, hopefully.
And again, your clay soils are going to feel very firm.
So, we'll start on the ribbon now
if you want to go to the next one.
So, what we're going to do,
if you just have, I'm gonna work this up in a ball again.
Trash can
so I don't get too nasty.
So I have my,
I don't know if you can see this, but I have my ball here.
So what we're going to do is we're going to want to try to make a ribbon with it.
So what we'll do,
get it is about as round as you can.
And you want to hold your thumb on the top and push it over your index finger,
like this.
Could you hold your hand up a little bit higher?
Can you see it now?
Maybe down a little bit. So yeah. There you go.
Okay.
So we're going to push it over our index finger.
And what we're trying to look for here is how long it gets before it breaks.
And that's a good way to,
estimate your clay percentage and,
the breaks here.
If you have about a less than one inch ribbon before it breaks,
you're going to either have a loam,
silt loam or a sandy loam.
And the way to determine from there.
First off, you go by your ribbon length and that'll,
give you a rough estimate of your clay percentage.
And then if it feels real gritty, you'll probably have a sandy loam.
If it feels extra smooth,
it'll be a silt loam.
And then if it's neither, you just go with a loam.
If it's about one to two inches before breaking,
you're either going to have a sandy clay loam, silty clay loam or clay loam.
And again, just go off the grittiness or smoothness to it
after you have your ribbon size.
And let me try to work it up more.
The soil I got was really dry too,
so I had to add a lot of water to it before it'd start to take.
And if it's more than two inches
or 5cm, you're going to get into your real high
clay texture classes and that'll either be,
sandy clay, silty clay or clay.
And once you get over about 50 to 60% clay, that's super high.
Like a high clay percentage is to like 30%.
But once you're over 50 or so, it's just going to be straight clay
on all of the triangle.
So, if you want to go to the next slide,
it shows kind of what it should look like when you first work it up.
So that's how you go.
Just keep pushing it over until you get it.
And you kind of want it thinner than that. But
that's what it should look like when you first start making your ribbon,
and you just kind of want it to fall over your finger here.
And this is a good way just to get an idea when you're first doing it.
A lot of people,
they don't, or a lot of people I know don't even use the ribbon method.
They've just done it so much, they kind of know how it feels like. But,
the ribbon is the best way to tell for the first time, how much clay you have.
And if you go to the next slide.
That'll show, what the final ribbon should look like.
And that's from the same soil I'm holding here.
It just looks different.
I probably had it
at a better consistency when I first worked up, but,
again, your higher clay contents are going to lead to longer ribbons.
And that ribbon there, I have it,
here, probably right up
close to maybe two inches or so.
So I think this and it's, doesn't feel gritty at all.
It's kind of smooth.
So this is probably either a silty clay loam or a silty clay.
Going based off this, I forget what the soil series had it described as but
going off the ribbon
it's going to be right on the borderline of those two.
And you would just make your best estimate at that point.
Getting it that close is pretty good no matter what.
If you want to go to the next slide,
I can tell you some other things to consider.
And if anybody needs me to go back
or show more of the ribbon, just put it in the chat and I'll try to show it more.
But a way to help with determining
the exact sand percentage of your soil.
So what we want to do is put a real small amount
in our hand, and by a small amount, I mean
something,
I don't know if you can see
how much I have here, but not much.
Maybe a little more than this. But it won't take much.
And there's no sand in this either.
But just to show you kind of how much you want.
So you put a very small amount and you'll leave it in the palm of your hand,
and that'll make a mess here.
But oh well.
So what you'll do, you'll about flood your hand.
Just get like, a pool of water,
and you want to have it thoroughly, and you want to rub it in,
and you want to
get it good and just kind of let it drain out.
And if you have sand in there,
the sand should all only sand should be left.
All the others should wash out with the water.
If you just kind of carefully drain it.
And what you do is you compare what's remaining to the initial amount you had,
and that'll give you a rough, rough estimate of your sand.
And, if you go based off of that,
you can add that to your clay percentage.
Eli, I understand when you're flooding your hand, you cannot hold your hand
over your computer for it to show up in the video.
Please don't do that.
Can you describe it?
You've got you've got some soil in your hand.
You're adding water like a puddle, right?
Yeah. And you're-
Don't try to show that for the video.
Here I'll stay right
You're able to hold your hand further away from the camera, yep.
Back up a little bit and you should be able to show that,
There you go. Okay, well.
All I did was get my hand real wet, and I had, like, a pinch of soil in there,
you just rub it in.
You just rub it in and drain it out,
and you can see the sand grains left over, and you kind of compare
the amount they take up on your hand to what was there before.
And that'll give you a rough estimate of your sand percentage.
And if you add that to your clay, you can subtract it from 100 to get your silt.
And then, add that to determine what texture class
you have.
And then there's some other weird ways to pick up on sand.
You can hear it.
I know it sounds weird, but if you have a lot of sand,
you can put it up to your ear when you're working it in the ball,
and you'll kind of hear that gritty sound.
And, it's really just to let you know that it's there
and you can't really determine how much you have
at that point, but it's a good indication that you have sand.
And, I know a lot of people that have tasted their soil
to try to determine sand.
I wouldn't recommend doing this.
That, those sand grains are going to stay in your mouth
a lot longer than you think they would, and it, it's not a fun time.
Also, no telling what's
in your soil sample that you have, so you probably don't
want to go around eating it anyway.
But some of the people I did soil judging with didn't really care,
and they'd eat it all the time.
Again with soil.
If you have high clay contents, it's going to leave a fingerprint behind too.
And what I mean by that is if you take your ball
and just push it in, you can see, you probably can't see too good there,
but it'll leave behind the fingerprint on the ball that you can see.
If it's mainly silt or sand, it won't do that.
And, if you have high clay soils, something we would do for fun.
We'd let them dry out and throw each other throw at each other,
and they'd stay together as a ball.
If there's anything else
I need to go over or re-texture anything just let me know.