Field guide
Something looks wrong in the field? Match it here — acid soil, salt, iron lock, waterlog. Lab-sheet words live under Reading the soil test.
Can’t read the lab sheet? Open Reading the soil testProblem
12 guides
One guide can sit in more than one group, so the chip counts add up to more than 100.
Thin organic matterBlack soil getting thin and hardColour fades, clods increase, organic matter drops. Return straw, cut the years of only taking.
Hard-packed soilWheel tracks: seedlings don’t come up in the rutRuts hold water and starve air. Stay off wet ground, use the same tracks.
Hard-packed soilAggregates smashed: the surface powders, then turns to slurry in rainDust when dry, soup when wet. Organic matter, roots and fewer passes.
Hard-packed soilHard soil: a shiny pan the roots will not crossAfter rain a slurry, when dry a cap. Look at twenty centimetres before you feed.
Hard-packed soilCan film or straw mulch loosen hard soilIt stops the cap forming. It does not replace a cracked pan underneath.
Hard-packed soilRotary tillage every year: the tilled layer gets shallowerA fluffy top and a pan underneath. Change depth, subsoil in the dry window, don’t only spin faster.
Hard-packed soilHard soil and shallow roots feed each otherBreak the lid in the dry window, then keep living roots in the ground.
Hard-packed soilThe subsoiling window: when and how deepA wet subsoiler smears a new lid. Find the pan with a spade, set the leg there, protect the cracks.
Hard-packed soilThe plough pan: a lid under the rotary tillerA dense smear at tillage depth. Subsoil only when dry enough to crack. Don’t go deeper than the pan.
WaterloggingWaterlogging: wilt by day, wet soil, black rootsDrain first. Urea cannot enter a drowned root.
WaterloggingAfter rain the surface caps and cracks: water runs off, seedlings stickA light hoe when it can crumble, mulch, organic matter. Don’t pulverise wet.
Hard-packed soilClay that won’t till, then cracksSticky when wet, plates when dry. Organic matter and the right window beat adding sand.