Most of us are familiar with climate zones, but soil zones, too?

Of course, I was aware of different soil types in different regions. I just didn’t know there were names and classifications for them.

Gardening in Canada just did a video all about soil zones, and I learned so much!

Well, things make a lot more sense, now!

In the past, I’ve described where we live as being in that transition zone between Boreal forest and prairie. It turns out that zone is known as the Dark Grey soil zone.

I’ve also written about testing our soil. You can read about how those went, here, here and here.

This is a picture from one of those soil tests. Blue cap is phosphorous, purple cap is nitrogen and orange cap is potash. The only bright colour is the dark green pH test, showing we have very alkaline soil. The test colour strip only went to 7.5, and the samples were all darker than the colour strip got! Even our direct soil pH meter only goes up to a pH of 8, and I think our soil is probably at least a pH of 9 or even 10.

Besides being in a Dark Grey soil zone, we are also sitting on top of where the ancient glacial Lake Agassiz one was. When the lake drained, it was with incredible speed, and is believed to have extended the last ice age. Which means the water also took a lot of the lighter sediment from the lake bottom, with it, leaving behind the heavy stuff.

Like rocks, gravel, sand and clay.

Dark Grey soil zones have a problem with leaching. Basically, any time we have rain, the soil nutrients get leached down through the sandier layers below. Our region has more sand and gravel, than others. That means we’d have nutrients leaching out of our soil, even faster. Also, the leached nutrients would normally form a dense, compact lower layer. I don’t know where that layer would be forming in our area. Even when heavy equipment was used to deepen our gravel pit, as well as a dugout in the other quarter section that’s rented out, there’s just gravel and sand and clay.

When my mother had her huge garden here, my dad would plow cow manure into it almost every fall. That hasn’t been done in over 20 years. However, gardening did continue. Even after my parents could no longer garden, a couple of my brothers and their wives kept up small areas. The old garden area did still get plowed in the fall.

Plowed, but not amended. Among the things that disappeared from here over the years was the old manure pile from behind the barn. In fact, there are now dips on the ground where the pile used to be, so whoever took it, dug down pretty deep.

Yeah. Someone stole the manure pile.

I’m pretty sure I know who, but no matter.

So our soil conditions are as poor as they are due to both the lack of amendments, and our geology.

We’re not in a position to buy truckloads of manure and getting it all plowed into the area. Which means our plans to use raised beds of varying heights, modified hügelkultur style, is going to make all the difference in the world.

Thank you, GIC, for putting out this video! This information is going to be very useful in helping us plan things out.

The Re-Farmer