Our Soil

Just diggin' soil here, boss.
Yeah...it was 91 degrees that day.

The soil here is different than any I've tried gardening before. It's a collection of silt loams, the dominant one in the garden being N619A Kennebec-Lawson, channeled, complex 0-3% slope, flooded, according to the Goodhue County soil survey (thank you USDA-NRCS!). It has a lot more silt and clay in it than what you find on the Zimmerman sandy soils in Anoka county, so it's very prone to compaction. I hear that it produces great crops, but it's prone to flooding in this Zumbro River area. Bitter Creek, which runs behind the property, is known to flood, but in its highest year that the neighbor can remember it only reached the far edge of the paddock.

I think I've already observed the differences between the two soils from this map unit. There's one spot in the garden which stays wet long after the rest has drained and makes a fine, sticky mud. I think that most of the garden is the Kennebec series, but that spot is the more poorly-drained Lawson.

The parent material was silty alluvium from the many rivers and creeks in the area. The native vegetation was tallgrass prairie on most of the property, with alluvial forest along the creek. For more information about the history of this landscape, check out the MLRA (Major Land Resource Area, from the NRCS) factsheet: #105 Northern Mississippi Valley Loess Hills.

The soil pH should be around 6.5, which is great for growing things. It also has fairly high organic matter at 4.5-5%, which is also good for plants.

Anyway, that's the basic idea. I just wanted to record what I found for future reference.