The beginning of February generally doesn’t seem like the best time of the year to be outside all day digging holes. Luckily (sort of) it’s been a dry winter thus far so it wouldn’t be too awful to start digging around to get some soil samples. Rain was on the horizon so that day was crucial to get a big chunk of what I had to do out of the way.
Seeing as we haven’t had our soil tested in a long time and we’re about to venture down the path toward a more quantitative nutrient management system we needed to know what we were dealing with. Winter is actually a great time to be assessing our soil. It’s going to let us know what’s in the bank for the next growing season and what we need to focus on putting into the soil to increase the health and harvest of our next season.
We wanted to focus primarily on the vineyard soils at first because they cover about 75% of our growing space. We also allotted for some soil samples from the olive groves. In total we had 8 different sample areas chosen. Why 8? That seems like a lot considering we were covering a relatively small area of about 18 acres. For starters, we needed to account for the differences in health we had observed between the different types of grapes we are growing over the last year. As you might know, Alhambra Valley Ranch is in…a valley! The area was most likely carved out by water and with water comes movement and as I will show you also brings a variety of soil types.
Each circled code represents an area with a unique soil type so in our area we can see that there are 7 different soil types. I have to confess, I’m a bit of a soil nerd and for many of you out there you may be thinking, “Ok they’re different, but HOW different could they be? Dirt is dirt, right?” Let me show you some of the differences I found. These two samples were found about 600 feet from each other.
Don’t mind that little bit of soil that got transferred onto the right sample from the left. The one on the right has a really high clay content and is very sticky which is why it just looks wet, it holds water really well in the tiny pore spaces between soil particles. It looks like it lacks the surface texture of the left sample because when I shoveled it out, it clung to the shovel surface tightly. The left hand sample appears drier, lighter in color and, in person, felt more grainy because it was much higher in sand content. There are 3 different particle sizes in defining soil texture: sand, silt, and clay (from largest in size to smallest).
Digging out these two samples was also different. Samples have to be taken at a depth of 1-2 feet and after the first foot-deep hole in the high clay soil I realized it was going to be a long day. The clay soil was so sticky and so dense that 1 foot started to feel like a mile deep. Conversely, the sandy soil was much easier to get through up until I reached what sounded and felt like the top of a hard surface, maybe wood? Maybe the top of a treasure chest?? I was a little disappointed when I realized my treasure trove turned out to be a layer of compacted sand so hard it was almost a rock. Oh well, maybe treasure next time. Take a look at this layer of “sand stone”.
My take home lessons for the day were don’t be too overzealous with my plans, 8 samples actually requires 5 holes per area so this would total 40 holes. I only got to sample 3 areas before I really wished I had brought some gloves with me. I should check the road conditions before I start digging. It was my good fortune that a skunk got run over the morning I went out to dig…I left the areas closest to the road for another day.
I’ll leave you with a peek at our animals sunning out on the hills. 
