Soil test in a jar!
Would you like to find out how good the soil at your home is? Jar test allows you to see the layers of your soil. Soil texture is the proportion of clay and sand particles in soil that affects soil fertility by affecting water movement through soil, root penetration and water logging.
Step by step:
- Take a jar with a lid. The lid must seal the jar tightly to prevent water from leaking out.
- Feel the jar halfway up with the soil from garden or pot you want to analyze.
- Put a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid in the glass.
- Fill the jar with water but leave room for air at the top of the jar.
- Close the lid
- Shake strongly the jar for 2-3 minutes to mix water + soil+ dishwashing detergent well.
- Let the jar sit for 24 hours.
What you should see:
- after 1 min, the first layer is the sand fraction.
- after 1 hour, the next layer is the silt fraction.
- after 24 hours, or until the solution is clear, the next layer is the clay.
In some cases, either we should wait long enough until the suspension is clear enough or use a drop of some materials that quickly settles down the clays from water. But it is preferred to wait until the suspension is clear enough. If you have a lot of one or a lot of the other layer, make sure you treat the soil so that all the soil layers are in balance so that you have a balanced amount of everything.
Anyhow, it is just a good and quick approximation for texture, and gives the relative sand, silt, clay fractions.