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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Wednesday, February 05, 2025
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Little Ketchup
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Grittyville, WA
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Entry 35 of 56 |
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No roots here yet but the pore spaces for them are huge?! Maybe too big, even? Its weird to think that I have applied pressure equal to standing on this and there is still that much pore space?
Eventually, water flow and worms would fill the gaps, but essentially, its crazy to think that this is how porous it could be even after walking on it? It looks even if all the gaps got filled with worm poop there would never be sufficient compaction here to stop a root???
Note: I began to second guess my soil compression efforts, so as a further test I applied my full body weight to the soil in the test tube by kneeling with my full weight on the end of a "shoe sized" log... Its not a very scientific method, but oh well. ...Theres weird quirks of cone vectors (the application of downward force) that I cant control. So this is unscientific, but dang, it sure is fun.
This is the soil about 1 ft deep after "applying my full weight" to it. Really good? Really bad? Somewhere in between?
Is anyone using a penetrometer to try to get their soil density/compaction "perfect"?
One last note this soil has been fully rain saturated this winter so its at its field capacity. But its not in excess of field capacity... theres no "clay particles liquefying" issue here. Liquefaction is a separate issue.
All of this would surely drive a normal person crazy! But its home sweet home to me. My dad was a geologist and he managed to mention pretty much everything. So for better or worse, all this stuff is already in my head. He wasnt an agronomist but its all the same ideas especially those relating to hydrology (he was a board certified hydrologist too)-- just in a different setting.
Well, enough of the methodology. Let's just skip ahead to the results and conclusions...
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