Get to know your soil!

In this lesson, you will learn how to test soil properties yourself using simple and inexpensive methods. Before getting started, let’s explore the variety of opportunities.

Soil science offers many ways to investigate what is happening beneath our feet. When we test soil, we are not simply generating numbers; we are seeking to understand how a complex, living system functions and responds to its environment.

In soil science, we usually distinguish between physical, chemical, and biological properties. Physical properties describe how soil is formed and behaves as a material – for example, its texture, structure, or aggregate stability. Chemical properties include characteristics such as acidity (pH), carbonate content, or nutrient availability. Biological properties focus on life in the soil, including organic matter content, respiration, and biodiversity. Together, these perspectives help us form a more complete picture of soil as both a material and a living habitat.

We also differentiate between inherent and manageable properties. Inherent properties are largely determined by soil formation and parent material. Texture – the relative amounts of sand, silt, and clay, for example – develops over centuries. It cannot be changed quickly by human activities, which means that texture is largely stable on timescales relevant to our everyday decisions. Manageable properties, in contrast, respond to land use and management. Soil structure, soil organic matter content, and biological activity can improve or decline depending on how the soil is treated. Understanding this distinction is important when interpreting measurements: not everything we observe is equally changeable.