Episode 05 - Soil Composition & Structure

Hello and welcome again to another Kinsey Ag podcast. I'm Kyle Long here with Neil Kinsey and today's topic we're going to be talking about soil composition and structure and the importance that that has in soil fertility. So hi Neil. Hi Kyle, it's going to be fun today. Speaking about soil and physical part of the soil and why a farmer needs to know about that and why go over and know about that. Why garden needs to know about that. This is something most people try to skip over I think. Yeah, I mean, we got to figure out what the difference between soil and dirt is. Yeah, basically. Dirt for you sweep out of the house. So but you grow something. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, I'd like to dive right into like just kind of going over the composition and then how the texture of soil and then what kind of makes up the structure and how that interacts with the structure and the benefits of having proper structure I think is kind of what I'm thinking that we can cover today. So what you're saying is soil really isn't just dirt. Well, a lot more to soil than just the I think that's a matter of opinion depends on if it gets rain or not. I think a lot of people are going to call it dirt that's here. Well, that's their privilege. Well, I'd like to dive into the composition of soil and see if you agree with me here. Whenever I think of the composition of soil, I think of particles, minerals, organic matter, water, air or gas or organisms. And then whenever I look at particles, I think of mineral, there's both mineral and organic particles with the minerals themselves are the decomposed rock that are broken down into what we would call sand, silt and clay, which are our soil particles. The organic matter is the soil makeup with a composition of decomposing plant and animal tissue and waste, which is primarily located within that top two inches of soil. It's generally the most fertile part of the soils, what I'd say with the water that's generally pulled from the atmosphere or put on by irrigation. It's the vehicle that carries all of our nutrients down into the soil or the plant. The air is mostly pulled from the atmosphere or could be a byproduct of chemical reactions or whatever we're putting on fertilizers. And the organisms are a composition of different life forms in the soil, such as earthworms, insects, bacteria, fungi, basically any living thing that's underneath the soil structure or living within that soil structure. And you mentioned about the particles being mineral and organic. When you start looking at the mineral portion, well, that's really the nutrients. When you look at the organic portion, okay, that's the life of the soil or the life of whatever decomposition or whatever been grown and work back into that soil. So one way you could say is that's the mortar or the glue or whatever it is that holds the mineral aspects of it together in terms of the 50% side of minerals and humus because 50% is made up of minerals and humus hopefully or organic matter. And the other side then is the pore space. So we'll get to that. But what I'm looking at talking about the particles, composition of the soils and particle size, the minerals would be what we use for getting the nutrients into the plant. Why would put fertilizer on or if we need extra there. And then the organic matter would be how we encourage the health of the soil through the organism and so forth. So you think that organic matter is a pretty big big piece of the puzzle? Yeah. I think organic matter is very big piece of the puzzle. But I think a lot of people give a lot more credit than organic matter or humus deserves in terms of how it influences the exchange capacity of the soil. The clay portion of the soil or the mineral portion seems to be the big determining factor because on soils where we'll have say pastures that have four or five percent humus, then we come in and somebody says, well, I'm going to take this patient and plant it in corn. Within a matter of two years, that humus content can go from if it's four down to two, if it's five down to two and a half, but the exchange capacity really doesn't drop. We cut the humus in half, but we didn't really have an observable effect on the exchange capacity. Now that's not saying organic matter not important. Not saying soil organism is not important. Actually, Dr. Albrecht always pointed out that when you take equal amounts of soil or humus, that the humus has three times the nutrient holding capacity of the clay. So yeah, it's really important because when you get that in there, you have a whole lot better reservoir for whatever it is you need to grow those plants. I'm not trying to take anything away from it. I'm just trying to say the exchange capacity of soil seems to be determined far more so by the mineral makeup or the particle size of the mineral particles than it is of the organic colloids. But would you say that there's a lot of people that think, oh, well, if I just have a straight peat soil or the straight soil would just organic matter that they would prefer to have that? Well, yeah, there are a lot of people who think they would, but then go to those guys who have it. Like you go to Florida, down to the Zellwood, Florida, where they have the, they don't just call it peat soils. They call it mux soils. They have 20% humus, sometimes 25, but you know what? The first thing those people tell you is we can't grow something there if we don't put some nutrients on. And one in particular, like one fellow, a large vegetable go over there, I thought he's never going to believe me when I tell him this, but I said, you know, you need copper before you need anything. And he said, and they were going to go radishes there that year. And he said, Neil, we wouldn't even bother to put nitrogen on if we didn't put copper on first because it's not going to work. So you can have too much of anything. Basically, when you get above 7 1/2% humus, you start tying up the copper. And once you start tying up the copper, then what other kind of things are you affecting? That's one thing that's easy enough to measure, meaning if you had that and you don't put extra copper back, it's going to cause your problem in terms of copper deficiency. Whenever you're looking at a soil test, somebody that just has pretty much straight organic matter down four or six inches, like we typically say, hey, this is where we're going to sample. Is there a way that you look at that soil test and say, oh, well, this is how we get the proper structure for that? Or you just say, oh, well, that's just all organic matter. There's not much we can do with that. I believe there's all you have to do in terms of the soil is measure the part of that soil where the root structure is going to be and correct it. And when we get, when we were working with those soils, the muck soils or the peat soil, you know, you can go 30 minutes either way from here and get into the peat soil. One to the west of here, one company had a peat mine right there on one of the farms because it's so heavy. And that peat's been there. Does my dad with a little boy? I mean, it's been there a whole lot longer than that. But he talked about they were farming the peat back then. It's still here. Well, when we look at that, everybody, oh, you don't want to treat it the same way. We treat it exactly the same way. We just look at how much calcium do we need, how much magnesium now. It's going to take more, maybe sometimes it does. But what we're looking at is not what the total, what we're looking at is what's there in a form that the plants can pick up and use. And what are we looking at? Muck or what are we looking at peat or what are we looking at? Clear? What are we looking at? Saying the question is, do we have the right stuff there to go the crop? And do we have the right test to tell us whether we have the right stuff there to go the correct exactly. Yeah. Well, then so that brings segues pretty nicely into the next part of composition. You know, we talked about the organic side just now. I'd like to talk a little bit more about that mineral side. The soil particles, basically, the mineral particles, which break down, which is the decomposed rock that usually break down into particles that we call sand, silt, and clay. They're the sand particles generally. They have a large grittier feeling. And then we say silt generally is more flowery. And then clay is the smallest particle. And that's got that wet sticky feeling that kind of bonds to itself almost that whenever you are rolling around or messing with it in your hands. So I'd like to kind of talk about the differences in those because there is a special thing with clay that none of the other two particles have that. You're referring, I think, to the fact that clay is the smallest particle, but even that clay particle is not small enough to attract and hold nutrients. If you can look at it and see it. That's it. to be. What attracts and holds the nutrients in the soil, we can't see where they're high and we can't feel it with our fingers. It's the colloids of clay. The very small, take that clay and grind it down as far as as fine as you can get it. Those are the particles that pick up and hold the plant nutrients. And actually you start with the smallest particle on both sides. The organic material that attracts and holds the nutrients is the humus portion. What's the humus? It's when organic matter has been completely broken down the smallest colloidal form. And so we got the smallest colloidal form of organic matter, which we call humus and the smallest form of clay, which we call just a clay colloid. But we can measure the exchange capacity through clay, but not organic matter. We basically just say that organic matter, whatever we have out there is just extra holding capacity, but is not readily measured by our soil tests. It is as far as the organic matter, it can be measured, but it just doesn't seem to have as huge an effect on the exchange capacity. And I'm not saying organic matter doesn't affect exchange, but what I am saying is that compared to the amount of clay particles we have and the amount of organic particles we have, the organics are so small that it's generally a negligible part. Now if you start getting into sands, I think you can see, well, then this sandy soil, if we got a 5% humus, that's better than having two and a half or something like that. So this is not to try to say, oh, organic matter is not important. It's important even in terms of moisture holding capacity and in terms of nutrients. But to me, I look at the humus content of a soil in terms of how much water it helps us hold. Then it do in terms of how much nutrients it helps us hold it. We can't measure, I don't know how to measure, the amount of nitrogen or sulfur or boron that's in, that's held in the organic material until it's released in an available form. So just like when you start looking at organic matter, well, organic matter is a tremendous amount of nitrogen in it, but only 1 to 2% nitrate and 2% ammonia, we got basically 97% of that nitrogen in there. It's there in that organic matter, but you can't measure it. It's not in a form you can measure and utilize until it gets released by it. So what's in that organic matter? We really shouldn't count on it until we see, oh, there it is. It's whatever it is and who says, who says, well, it came from the organic matter, it came from the nutrient. But here's a certain amount of potassium. Did it come from the organic portion or did it come from the mineral portion? The important part is we have to be able to measure this there and available for those plants to use. And I don't know which it is, but one thing I will say and that is plant pathologists always tell us, if it's been already, if a nutrient has already been in a plant, converted into that plant uses it to grow. When that organic material breaks down, that's the most available nutrient for the next plant to pick up. So I personally feel that what's in the organic matter, if it's released, that's what plants going to take first. Now how much, how much of that is from one and how much of us from another, to me, that doesn't matter what matters is does the test show we have enough? Yeah, because our test is showing us what's technically available for that plant root to be able to trade off with or take up. And this is the question we need to ask about every nutrient on that test. Is it, is a soil test something that really answers your question or is it just an excuse? Well, if you can use that in count on it, it answers the question and that's what we're looking for. How do we run a test so that what we're measuring really is going to be useful now? There are always relationships, something else is hurting it, something else is not helping think of this nature, but that's what we're trying to put together from that test. And that's what we're going to try to put together on this podcast as we go along. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I'd like to get back to the clay because that's really the meat and potatoes of what determines our soil structure, though, because as you said, that organic layer, it is only within the top inch or two of soil generally, as we speak, we're going to speak generally on that. But we have four inches underneath that, which make up a, you know, that's double the amount of particles or whatever you want to call that mass that the organic layer would be. So we need to look at clay because that's going to be what is the majority holder of our nutrients in our water. And so that's why we're stressing clay more than anything else. So I'd like to get back into that and just kind of talk about the benefits of clay. We know that texture is the mixture of sand, silt and clay particles within your soil. So all soil is made up of a mixture of all three. It's very almost impossible unless in a laboratory experiment to have exactly one type of particle throughout a whole field. I'd actually like to talk about the surface area between the three different particles too, because I think that that that really is where a big advantage is to having clay or a mixture of those three, understanding the difference in texture and how all three of those different particles are represented out there makes a big difference. Well, how do you see the clay being different than the silt and the sand? Really, it's just about that that exchange capacity that comes back and then that's how much you know that's out there. You could test a sand, silt and clay, but really and truly all that the sand and silt's doing is just kind of playing dominoes with the water and nutrients until it can get a hold or one of those clay colloids can actually attract that water or nutrient into or onto that that colloid itself. Otherwise, it's just going to leach down farther and farther and it's going to get out of that aerobic zone and out of way out of the way of the microbiology and the plant roots. So it becomes ineffective at that point. Well, one thing I think you've even talked about in the past is if you take a room and you fill it up with basket balls, okay, let's call that that's sand. You got a lot of air space there, a whole lot more air space than if you took ping pong balls and came in there and filled up the same room and maybe that's not the right comparison between sand and silt, but then you take BBs and put those in there and you got a whole lot less room than that, but you have a whole lot more attraction between the metallic portion in those soils and I still remember a seventh grade experiment that our teacher had. He took a glass and filled it up with water and he classes that glass full of water. We also said yes it is. Then he took an eyedropper and he dropped a few more drops till it ran over. He said, now's the full water. Oh, yes, full. Then he has started dropping paper clips in. And as we dropped the paper clips in, we dropped quite a few paper clips in there before that water ran over again because of the ability to attract, well, same kind of thing with the minerals in the soil. You know, what determines the saturation there? A whole lot of different things. See, that's kind of what I did on that last YouTube video that I did. It was more like the smaller the particle, the less air space is going to be between those, which means there's more surface to bounce off of and it takes longer for that to infiltrate down the smaller those particles are. And whatever attractive value each one of those has, they actually have a little bit more holding capacity as well. Yeah. And the beauty of clay, though in particular, is that it has an affinity for water and nutrients. It is the only one that has unbonded hydrogen basically around its outside of those layers that it has. It's basically sheets of unbonded hydrogen atoms on the ends that allow for positively charged ions or those cations to actually come in and attract and loosely hold to that either through a electrostatically charged bond or a hydraulically charged bond, which. Well, hydrogen has a positive charge and calcium magnesium potassium, sodium has a positive charge. So, I think I'm going to check a positive to a positive. Yeah, right. There's not. Yeah, you're not. It's going to push that hydrogen off. Exactly. And that's the whole key to the, to what we're looking at. How do we get the right amount of each nutrients there, including the hydrogen? I think I know the answer there. It's balance. And we have no such thing. Yeah, exactly. We'll get into that too. But basically, I just wanted to talk about the differences really quick and the three different textures or the three different particles and texture and how they interact with each other and the special benefit that clay brings and determining soil structure, because that's, I think that's the key to determining what soil structure is. But before we get into proper soil structure, I kind of want to go over the three properties of soil structure. And what I see is the biggest benefit, which would be the physical, chemical, and biological side of soil, which promotes proper structure, because they all three work together. Whenever I think of that, I think of the physical property as the soil and plant itself. It's the physical aspects of agriculture. With the chemical aspect, I think, of the fertilizer and nutrient inputs that we put in, and we apply to that crop and soil, and the biological being that the microbiology or the organic aspect within the soil, anything living under our feet, basically, if no organic materials were there, then it wouldn't be soil anymore. It just be dead rock. But the physical influences the biological aspects by creating this symbiotic relationship. That plant sends its roots down into the soil that creates a micro environment that the bacteria and fungi and other living organisms in the soil can thrive and trade off beneficial nutrients for each other, and create basically a food source for each other. So there are people who actually believe that, hey, the chemistry is not really that important. The physics is not really that important. If you just got to my code there, right? Everything else is going to take care of itself. The my code will take care of everything. I'd have to say that I have seen soils where people have put on my code and mine the soil with the my code, just the same way you can mine the soil with the going to same crop time and time and time and time. All I'm saying there is all three have to work together. But saying that, which one, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but as far as what I always would say in terms of Dr. Albrecht and his program, he would always start out. The biology is the important part. Well, to him, the biology was the life in the soil and everything that was there that supported the plant root and the plant root including. So whatever it takes to get the nutrients into that plant root into the crop we're going. So to me, when he looked at biology, he was looking at everything the plant had underneath the soil and everything that supports that plant root underneath the soil. I don't think that we could call soil soil without all three working symbiotically. I don't think that there's there's a tear to it really because they all three work together. That's why it's the three properties. Well, they all three work together, but which one can we least influence? Well, we least influence the biological. That's right. And now there there'd be a lot of people who would disagree with that as well, but what what is it that perpetuates life, whether it's a microorganism or whether it's us, it's four things, air, water, shelter, and food. And when you start looking at that, if the microbes don't have the right amounts of each one of those and that comes back to that balance you were talking about, when we talk about balance, that's what we really mean. Having the right amount of whatever. And unless you have the right physical structure, you don't have the right to ability to have the air and water there. Now is physical structure always going to be right? You have a flood, you have a heavy rain. Now the water comes up too much water in there, but the key is having the proper amount of resilience so that that so that space can the bounce back, get the proper amount of air to water. You can return back to normal quicker and more efficient, efficiently and effectively. Whether it's air, whether it's water. Because basically that physical structure, you know, that's the foundation, that's the home for the biology. If we don't get the physical structure right first, then there's no home. It's where we're in a house without a roof, you know. It's the right environment. That's what we're looking for. Getting the environment there, not just for the plant root, but for everything that supports it. But that physical structure will only be right when the chemistry is right because those mental elements that are there always having influence on what's going to happen in terms of how much poor space or how little poor space we have. Yeah, I like the bill brush analogy of they're in the kitchen, you know, say we're in a house. So we need a house for everything to survive. And then how much food do we have in the refrigerator? That is the chemical side that is able to feed the microbiology and the plant roots themselves as well. So and then if we have both that physical aspect and that chemical aspect, we have, we give that biology everything it needs to thrive and survive, which with that biology thriving, we actually produce better, more efficient and effective crops that way they they benefit from the other two, but the other two also benefit from that biology because the biology is what convert that chemical that we put into a plant usable form, which in turn also gets taken up by the clay colloids and influences the physical structure as well. And so that's why I say that they all really bounce off of each other and it is just a cycle that. This may have been I talk about these things all the time so I don't remember if this was in one of the other podcast, but Dr. Robert used to always use one real specific illustration and he said when we learn to isolate the colloidal humans from the soil and you take that colloidal humans out, he said you've taken the life out of the soil. And he said you can plant a seed in there and it won't germinate until you put just a small amount of colloidal humans back in and when you do that then that seed germinate so life only comes from life. And this is the one thing we've got to have life in that soil and the better we can get that balance of life the better we're going to do for everything whether it be nutrient value, whether it be aeration, whether it be how that plant goes on top. That's what we're really trying to do what we're trying to help everybody do in terms of getting that soil right whenever we're talking about structure though, you know, the physical structure, the foundation where where biology is housed or just let's just talk about structure in general soil structure. What do you think what would that optimum soil be that allows us to bounce back from over watering or flooding or drought or whatever. Well, to me, the optimum soil would be 25% air, 25% water around 5% humans and 45% mental content. That works very well is that to say, oh, you can't have six or seven percent humans or 4% humans and a mental be a little bit bigger. Well, to me, the important side is the aeration side that you get 25% air, 25% water in those poor spaces so that we can keep that that amount of balance there because then we've got the ability for the micropos to take what they need in terms of air and water and for the plant to do the same thing. Yeah, right. Because I mean, to me, air is a byproduct of soil balance though to me because you can't force something to have air unless you're just going out and putting out injecting O2 into the soil. Soil, but if we're putting on what we need in the correct amounts and achieving, we can achieve that proper structure and it either tightens up the soil or loosens up the soil depending on what soil type you have to give you that air as a byproduct rather than in other word, we've got to have that so open enough that the air and water movement can take place. And when you start looking at that, maybe you're thinking about covering this at another time, but what times the soil and what loosens the soil well of the four things that make it that principally are used to make up what we call pH calcium magnesium potassium sodium, one calcium causes an increase in soil porosity because it causes the clay particles to aggregate or flocculate together. And if they pull together, it increases the space. Yeah, calcium has an affinity for each other, those calcium ions and so they loosely almost like balloons, you know, electrostatically charged, they kind of they want to kind of group together and in turn, whenever they group up together. So they attach themselves to that clay colloid and then another clay colloid right beside it has some calcium bonded to it as well, then those two calcium ions kind of want to bring those two clay colloids together, which will increase the or decrease the distance of those clay colloids together and will actually increase the poor space that way. And I think an illustration that people don't necessarily think about that often, but farmers seem to understand very easily if you got an old muddy pond and it's, you know, it stays muddy. Yeah, maybe weeks and weeks and it still never clears up. Just go out there, take some calcium and take 50 pounds or whatever, depending on how big it is, it might be a lake it but I'm talking about a pond, small area. So you come out there. and what the old advice is was sprinkle calcium on half of it. Then if it doesn't clear up, come out and put another 50 pounds on the other side. And once you get enough calcium there, all of a sudden, they'll clear up. And because those clay particles start to flocculate and they'll sink to the bottom. On the Colorado River versus the little Colorado, when you're going down the Colorado River, it's sort of a greenish color. When you get to the little Colorado, it comes through calcium. It's as clear as it can be. Just as clear, you can see all the way to the bottom. That calcium actually keeps the clay particles from mudding up the stream. So when we put calcium on and get it in the right concentration on the soil, when that water runs into a pond, then the pond is going to stay clear as well. You go a lot across the river over here into Kentucky. And those guys have clear ponds. But you go right here where we are. And most of the time, when we are low in calcium, and I pond take a lot longer to clear up than just over into Kentucky size. But mostly, so whenever we're adding calcium, though, that's typically on a heavy ground where there's a lot of clay presence there, generally, too. A lot of calcium, but even the most sandy soil gets to the point where they need some calcium from time to time. To keep what we would call that ideal structure. But typically, the difference in sandy conditions is there's a lot less of that. Those clay particles present in that soil. And so we actually need to do the opposite. And we need to push magnesium back into that soil. Because that has the opposite effect of that calcium. And it actually disperses clay particles. And we usually see that typically in sandy conditions, we have a more calcium than we do magnesium and comparison to each other, which we want anyway. But it's typically inherently higher in calcium and lower in magnesium than what we particularly like. On the clay soils, we generally tend to have too much magnesium and not enough calcium. On the sandy soil, we generally tend to have a whole lot more calcium and not enough magnesium. So we have to emphasize the magnesium on the sand and emphasize the calcium on the clay. Now, that's a general statement. But as an overall guidance, yes, that's right. And that's the big fallacy in so much of agriculture in that people don't treat the clay soils and their sandy soils any different. They just come in there, well, whatever one needs doesn't must need that we need this to go to the crop. And okay, for NPK sulfur, yep, you need so much in order to make a bushel. But in terms of what influences that pore space, the calcium, magnesium and sodium and to some extent potassium, that also has to be taken into consideration. And if it's wrong, you're not going to have the right amount of pore space. Because what's going to happen on a, if you add magnesium or dolomitic lime to a high clay content soil that probably here in the Midwest, at least generally, generally has high magnesium, then we're going to tighten up that soil even more now. And you're going to get a lot more runoff, hardly any nutrient infiltration in there that gets to go down that, that aerobic zone. Just a little side team, Ryan bought from University of Missouri, did some research using soils that already had the right amount of calcium magnesium. The calcium magnesium level, calcium 65 to 70% magnesium, around 10 to 12. And he said, I want to mess it up. See what happens. So he put a huge amounts of magnesium on some of those replications. And he showed a picture of one of those replications and where he put it. That's all got so hard it cracked open. He had a crack and it stopped right where the magnesium, right where he had stopped putting the magnesium on that little replication, it stopped there. All I'm saying is magnesium, if you don't need it and you put it on, it's going to make that soil harder. And when it makes it harder, it makes it stickier and it'll make it wear the crack. Now I'm not saying you can ever make a desert soil crack, but I am saying that soils that have enough magnesium when you put too much on there, it's going to make it harder. And all of a sudden, it spreads apart, but it's not making it poor. It's just like it crack open when it rains, just slap it right back together here. Yeah, because and then whenever we're thinking of magnesium, you know, whenever I or whenever I think of magnesium, I think about it and its ability to hold water all by itself, it's also special, you know, the calcium is special in that yes, it flocculates has an affinity for each other. It can, it can build towards each other and actually create these poor spaces or help expand those poor spaces, but magnesium does the opposite, but it also has a special ability that it actually holds water too because it's hydro statically bonded to it's a hydro statically bonded to that, that clay colloid. And so there you already have more water there, more moisture for plants to be able to pick up, but also generally and higher magnesium, it actually disperses itself out too because magnesium since it is hydro statically bonded that hydrogen and that water molecules actually will push those clay colloids apart and tighten up those soils. Which means when somebody says magnesium is not important in a soil, if you're talking about a sandy soil, they don't know what they're talking about because we need that extra water. When you put that extra magnesium there, it attracts and holds extra water. First time I ever saw that and you still don't hear that much about it today, but the first time I ever saw it that was a study that was done in Israel in the in the sand, where they looked at well, what does magnesium do to a soil? Well, as they put the magnesium on what they found was it actually, it actually reduced the pore space, which means now the water and get it under out is easy or doesn't flow through as easy, but they said also the magnesium had an affinity for water to detract and help attract and hold more water accordingly, not just because we reduce the pore space, but we increase the water holding capacity of that soil. I say we they increase we we do if we do the same thing. Increase the water holding capacity by maximizing on sand, you maximize the amount of magnesium that soil can stand because we already are inherently less usually less clay is present in a sandy condition. So we need to try and utilize what little we have available to us and if we have high calcium, then they're already bonded together. They're already kind of clicked up and so we need to introduce that magnesium to get them to bully off that calcium ion from that clay colloid and make use of that and spread those out and to creating a better environment. But you also have to watch something else and that is a course clays some of the old course clays out here in the old arcs their clays, but they don't have an exchange capacity of more than four. It looks like a you know the sand bars and miscipro have better exchange than that some of them. So but you look at and you think well this is a clay soil we need more calcium and less magnesium you gotta treat that clay soil just because it has its course clay is not the clay colloid. So we still have a lot of extra porosity there we have to use the magnesium on those old course clays just like we have to use it on a sand let the exchange capacity determine what you're going to do not well is it too much clay or too much sand. It's it's based on what kind of porosity do you have yeah that's the benefit of a soil test though is figuring out exactly what our nutrient holding or what our clay content or our colloidal clay content is is and that's how we determine what our structure should be because there's certain ways that we we have it looking at it understanding. Oh this is an extremely sandy soil so we need to know or we know that we need to drive magnesium up this far and calcium up or typically down this far or add to it whatever however the dice roll on that but we we haven't ability to but what you said there was the correct way to say it and that is we need to know what the colloidal clay is in that so because that's what determines the nutrients. The nutrient holding ability you can have all these course clay particles that does not the clay itself is not what attracts and holds the nutrients it's the clay when it's broken down into that finest particle those college and those clay soils in many many of the I don't say all but many of those clay soils in the Ozarks don't really have any college they've been eroded away. I don't go and it's just there's no more clay colloids in that clay than there is in sand right. Yeah so it's just a matter of looking into what is actually out there and that's that's the benefit of what what soil testing can do as we've already stated in one of our early. or episodes, but understanding this and how it relates to structure and how important structure is is the key to growing a good crop is understanding what is out there your sand, silt, and clay, what that composition of soil is so that we can better understand how to manipulate it and to bring it into that ideal structure. And what you're talking about there is when we look at texture versus structure, textures what we've got in terms of sand, silt, and clay, and what you've got is what you've got unless you want to make a big change and we don't advise that to a farmer as a whole lot more economical to work with what you've got. But on the other hand, you can't change texture unless you take out some sand or bring in some clay or bring in some sand or whatever, but you can change the structure and how do you change that structure by the chemistry of that soil. What's there in terms of what we've just been talking about the calcium, the magnesium, potassium, and sodium, those are the four things that most influence it. But what if you got a soil won't go anything? To me, this is the proof of whether or not what we're saying really works. You take a soil and grow nothing. It's so toxic that you say, well, no plants will go to it. And I know people are going to say, oh, that's not possible. Look, had a farm just less than 30 miles away and they had a 10 acre field and they said, nothing grows there. We can't go anything. Just stay out of that. Don't even sample it. It won't go anything. You don't even go weeds and grass. It was barren. We came in and sampled that soil. It was a sandy type soil. We sample that soil. It needed a ton of dolomitic limestone to the acre. They put it on there and grew corn on it the next year. Now, the nutrients just weren't there. But they looked at that. They said, that soil is just so toxic, nothing will grow there. It was just so lacking nutrients and nothing would grow there. Every time you have a toxic soil, that means you got too much of something you don't need and too little of something you do need. And so what the key there is come in and measure the soil and correct those nutrients to what it takes you get the right structure for that soil. And you can take a soil that's whether it's sodium or potassium or whatever or something else that's so toxic that you'd say, well, nothing will go correctly aerobic zone as deep as the fence post rise. We talked about how deep the air goes in that soil. Well, the top two inches, that's what the most mycobial activity is. That's what the most of the humans has formed. But when you go down and deep is the air penetrates that soil, which is as deep as the fence post, the right generation of six or eight inches, now correct that area. Take samples and correct that area. And if you're not going to work the soil, start out with the top four inches. Don't say, well, hey, we're going to put enough on for the whole thing. Start out with what you can influence over a period of 12 months time. And that's about four inches if you put everything on top. All right. But when you straighten that soil out in the aerobic zone, even if you measure that subsoil and you say, it's still just as bad as it ever was. That plant, those plants, the crop you're going to go there will send those tap roots right down through that so-called toxic subsoil without any observable adverse effects. I'm not saying it's as good as an advantage, as otherwise. But all I'm saying is the real key to going crops is to correct as deep as the fence post rise. Is there any difference in the depth of the aerobic zone in a sandy soil versus a clay soil because we generally have that tightness? There is generally a difference. A heavier clay soil will probably be more close to six inches. And if you got compassion-led or something, it may not show up that well. But the sandier soil would generally tend to have the air will tend to go deeper into those. So should we sample that differently though if the aerobic zone is different in a sandy soil? Well, should we go deeper? As far as that, if you're looking at that you're going to work the whole thing, I won't mention the name, but we have one client and he came to several meetings and he started to realize, well, look, I don't just want my aerobic zone to be right. I want as deep as I can get it to be right. And the crop that he was planting was wine grapes. And he said, I can mix those soil good down to 18 inches. Now they worked on 36 inches deep, but the old little thumb is you only get a good homogenous mix about half the depth you work. So what we did was took six inches, 0 to 6, 6 to 12, 12 to 18. They went ahead and took even 18 to 24. And 24 to 30 and 30 to 36. But they're going to mix all that soil together. Well, we treated that soil and said if you're going to work at 36 inches deep, put everything to top 18 inches and they don't. It didn't correct in one time, but in putting that on there, they actually created a much better soil down deep where the roots would go back and grow down there faster. It's not saying that if you've got a toxic subsoil, that that's going to be just as good as a soil that's not toxic. But it is, I am saying that if you, what's going to have the most influence on being able to go a profitable crop there is take care of that aerobics on first. Now what I would tell you is even if it's sand, it might penetrate five inches instead of four. Don't take a chance. It's, it's just take, you can be sure that that four inches is going to tolerate. What we're trying to do is make sure we don't create an excess of something that ties up something else. Yeah. From what I understand, the feeder roots that top, well, actually just, everything likes to get nutrients from that top two inches if it can because that's where all of the aerobic or that's where all the biology is. That's where the buffet is. That's where everything is happening. So toxic subsoils can be detrimental, but I like to think of the one grower, the wine grape grower that has some vines by the sea and he's got a salt water table basically up almost inches underneath that soil. I think it's eight inches under or something. The soil, it starts becoming salt water. And those tap root or those main roots go down, go down right into that water table and it struggles, but if we're putting on the calcium and stuff and we're actually fixing that top couple inches or four inches because it's a vineyard. So it's not being worked up or anything. So once we started correcting that top four inches, then it actually started helping and we started gaining yield back from well, help him and not only that, but within 10 years time, even though you put everything on top within 10 years time that what you do and just by merging that top four inches will affect soils 25, 30, 35 inches, two and three feet down. It'll actually move down that far. Why is it now will it in that salt water? I don't know because maybe the roots don't get down there to decompose and so forth. But one thing about it, as long as you keep that calcium corrected on top, the sodium going to have a harder time moving in there because it's not going to displace the calcium so well. Yeah, and I'm not saying that because the plant's going to take up water and it's going to take up what's it got? It's got salt water. So it will have some sort of a sodium effect of sodium, but with the main portion, if it needs it, I think that it's going to secondarily pull up from that subsoil if it has to, but it would primarily like to get everything even its water and nutrients from where those main feeder roots are. That's right. So, yeah, it isn't an ideal situation now, but are we creating a situation where we don't have to rely on that secondary process of that of that plant? In that case, the more pure water you can supply up on top into that aerobics only and it doesn't have to pull from that salt water. Before we run out of time, I'd like to give a reward to the farmers who have waited through this and listened and so forth to a way that they can tell. I mean, we say, all right, this is what the ideal soil is. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but what that ideal nutrient value does is determine the right structure. Well, you can check your own structure. Just a farmer, if he wants to just, before you do a soil test or even after you do a soil test, you can make this comparison. Go out there and just take a regular little old stainless steel soil probe that is cut away on one side. Push it down, get, try to get into an area. That's not compacted from wheel tracks in other words if you can get up in the roll or something so that you don't get to The Compaction of the the better the soil is allowed to settle on its own The more correct this test is gonna be but what I'm talking about is just go out there and observe in your own fields When you push that probe down and pull it out Does it go in easy enough or do you hit a little bit of resistance somewhere? But let's say that probe goes in easy enough. You pull it out and then you You got it cut away so you start right up at the top like at the top of the top soil and take your thumb and push it down and just Don't mash or anything just take your thumb and push on it and see how much resistance you made to your thumb and When you push on it or whatever softness it is keep going until you feel more resistance If that only goes about a half an inch and then you feel it always got harder That means easier calcium is too low or your magnesium is too high All right, if you can go two and a half and now what does one of my mean me that if you're a if it's a clay soil and you do that That means you probably got over 20% magnesium in that soil Magnesium does make a soil harder and you can prove it by even looking at it this way If you can go down two and a half inches before you meet that resistance, that means you're probably going to be in high teens If you can go four to five inches before you meet that resistance, that means you're likely going to be in that 10 to 12% range And when you find a soil that has calcium between six now This will vary from one soil test to another But I'm talking about using the test that we ever we say the ideal is 68 calcium 12 magnesium All right, that's a percent base saturation. Yeah, 68% calcium 12% magnesium in turn to base saturation Well, when you start when you get that And on the test that we've got you ought to be able to go out there and if you've got the calcium between 65 and 70 and the Magnesium between 10 and 12 You ought to be able to push on that and find out hey, we got a nice soil four or five inches deep All right, all I'm saying there is that's a way to take a look and see Does that does your soil test correlate with our soil test if you're using somebody else's test It may not be that you may be able to get four or five inches down and it says it's 15 Or you may say it's eight Well, that's because of the various way of determining level so the numbers are not always going to be the same But if you got to write soil if you've got to write soil it should go four to five inches down before you meet resistance Whatever test it is if you can get that you can say this is what I want on this test and And it really does help determine How easy that soil is going to feel to your thumb Based on the chemistry of how that soil is made up and if you've got too much sodium or too much potassium or too much magnesium It's always going to make that soil harder Yeah, and if you don't have enough clay or what if it's a sandy soil with You know if it's just primarily sand up there in the top couple inches though then don't be hard to Yeah, if it's all Sand that's then you got a major it. Yeah Measure it when your soil test and say okay, but you might be surprised how many sands when you start pressing that really won't you You'll meet resistance before you get four to five inches down. I've I've broken a soil probe trying to drive it through sand I never had broken a soil probe trying to drive it to clay I've had sand well here here's an example so many farmers that farm sand get an inch of rain midnight Seven o'clock in the morning looks dry All right, well hey is dry enough we can discuss we can feel that plant being you know more no tell a lot of time today But used to everybody went out and disc that field to plant the beans If it if you just got a rain and it really is still wet there You come in and work that and it's a high magnesium soil as deep as you work that that's where your hard pan's gonna be and I've gone into fields where they planted the Double crop beans after wheat we couldn't get to probe more than four inches down Because that's how deep that disc ran If the disc ran three inches that's how deep you got if it ran five inches that's how deep you got and most of those farmers thought they were running a whole lot deeper But that compaction layer was right there So again The higher the magnesium the harder it is get that probe through that crust But especially if it dries out Yeah, that's what I mean yeah, right as long as as long as it's still wet and and your moisture is below and above You're not gonna have that fine, but I'm talking about in July and August when it's not raining You go in there to pull the test and why can't I get this probe in and here's the real test You go out through there and you're trying to get a probe in and then When you're using low finishing disc There's a place right there in the middle where those two gangs don't actually Pack anything they're cutting away, but they don't pack if you get that probe in there go right on down Yeah Because that because they didn't pack it Now if you can't do it you packed it with something else beforehand. Mm-hmm, but Question Why aren't farmer taught that? Why aren't farmer taught that in agriculture? Because it's generally accepted That pH and pee and the nutrients as all you need you don't need to know about exchange capacity or base saturation And until you measure exchange capacity and base saturation You're never gonna know whether that four inch four to five inches How does that match up and turn to nutrient values in your soil? Only way you know is by measuring the percentage of calcium percentage of magnesium potassium and sodium And if you talk to most agronomists in the world today, they still tell you well that doesn't matter. You don't need to know that that's It's that's too much time too much money too expensive it costs too much It doesn't if you're gonna straighten your soil out That's that's the key are you gonna straighten your soil out or are you looking just to make as much as you did last year and hopefully a little bit more Sometimes that works, but you know if I finally farmer get to the point where they say I'm putting on more fertilizer But I'm not getting better That's when you start need to start looking at something more than just well how do we feed the crop? Well really shoot all the time if you want to get your top potential but To me that that is one good reason and every Every private laboratory does exchange capacity and base saturation Even though everybody says it's not necessary well if it's not necessary then why would every private laboratory do it? Well someone say well because the farmer wants to know what or That's that's standard for a private laboratory, but once you know what those numbers mean And a farmer can go out in his own Go out on his own land and find out What those numbers mean in terms of good and good calcium and magnesium and even Extreme sodium or extreme potassium you can see that on how that soil reacts So basically in terms of structure though that's what we're promoting is calcium magnesium above Or what are our primary determining factors of that soil structure and then the other cations help with The structure and less significant ways, but are significant to the plant though. So Basically what I wanted to try and get through was the soil structure and we'll go over kind of what How to achieve that ideal structure and the next episode, but I just like to make a point that Nutrition and balance they work hand in hand to help create that ideal environment for that plant to be able to grow In other words what we're going to be talking about next is the nutrient makeup of the soil determines the proper soil structure or not Well, I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in to today's podcast and thank Neil for being here as always always fun to get to Take a break from the calculator every once in a while and sit down and discuss theory. So Yeah, just talk just talk about some of the things that you figure well, you know people People have a chance to consider or not as in terms of using it on their own Property or their own acreage right and I know we're just another Voice now that gets thrown into the mix of everybody else pushing and pulling that are ways the best way, but I think To me, there's there's no This is the only correct answer, you know, and I think that without the benefit of education and now that we're in a world where we're able to communicate on a more large scale. I think that it's almost our duty to try and try and educate and inform people Otherwise, what are we doing with the soil test the doctor all-break developed and GPS The proofs in the pudding and all you got to do is follow through and you can find out real Real soon in terms of farming terms. I mean, you know, it takes a year to go crops and so forth But it doesn't take very many crops until you can say I'm on the right path or not right yeah Well, we'd like to again. Thank everybody for tuning in today and we will be talking about how to achieve this proper soil structure that we were talking about today in our next episode. Don't miss it. And the meat. Exactly. And it's going to be a good one. It's going to be our best to date, I hope. But if you're feeling in the mood for more education, before that, we do have a YouTube channel now with a couple of demonstration videos uploaded by yours truly. And so if you need a little fix before then, just head on over to YouTube and just search for Kinsey Ag on YouTube. And there's a lot of other videos that Niels done over the years or had done for him over the years that are also on there that could be of interest to you as well. So you can always check that out and until next time we'll see you around the band. All right.