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SIMPLE FIELD SOIL IDENTIFICATION TESTS

PREPARATION OF SAMPLES
All lumps must be thoroughly pulverised but care should be taken to ensure that particles are not broken. Large gravel, sticks, leaves and other foreign matter should be removed. The remaining soil should then be used for testing.

PARTICLE SIZE
Gravel and coarse sand particles can be seen with the naked eye, fine sands with difficulty. Silt and clay particles cannot be seen with the naked eye (but this is a positive identification.

FEEL
Most sands feel sharp and gritty when rubbed between the fingers.
Moisten fingers - dab in clay and silt. Clay becomes sticky, dries flaky and is hard to remove when dry. Silt feels smooth, not sticky, dries powdery and dusts off easily.

SETTLEMENT TEST
Half fill the jar with fine soil, then fill with liquid supplied Shake the bottle well, then leaves to settle out

[1] Gravel and sand settle immediately.

[2] Silt settles in about a minute.

[3] Clay can take an hour or more.

This allows you to make a good estimate of the quantity or % of each particle size in the soil. Learn more about soil testing (click)

CRUMBLING TEST
Remove gravel and coarse sand from sample. Add water and mix to a plastic state. Mould some 25mm and 6mm balls. Allow drying completely. Grip the balls one at a time as shown below and try to crush them.

[1] Both sizes break - low dry strength - clay content less than 10%
[2] Only the small size breaks - medium dry strength - clay content 10% to 2O%
[3] Neither size break - high dry strength - clay content greater than 20%

SHRINKAGE TEST
Remove gravel from sample and pass through a household food sieve using the soil that passes. Add water and mix to a plastic state. Fill a mould and allow drying. Measure the shrinkage and length of mould to calculate the clay content as an approximate percentage.

Approximate clay content %
= length of shrinkage x 500
length of mould

Note: - 500 is a constant.

A table for analysing the results is available from World Enzymes Australia
at :mailto:sales@mite.com.au?subject=soilchart

This information was put together by Brian Jacksonof World Enzymes Australia.

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