The science of soil taxonomy and classification is interesting! I forget how many different soils there are estimated to be in the US, alone....as much as 50,000 though! The term 'type', as in 'soil type' really does refer to the texture of the soil, only. When discussing texture, we mean the particle size of the mineral content of a soil...that would be your sand, silt, and clay. Each of those 3 terms, technically speaking, refers to a precise range of mineral particle size. 'Loam' refers to any soil with a somewhat balanced ratio of sand, silt, clay, and organic components. As the ratio tilts one way or another, we use such terms as sandy loam, or clay loam, etc. Those terms make no reference to the mineral source material. Kinds of soils differ in their make-up depending upon a zillion different things, but the make up of the parent material (rock) is probably first. Just think of all of the different mineral sources and combinations! Rock deposits vary enormously. Here is a link that might be useful: Click here!

O nut... Is there a reason you are not concerned about damaging your soil in the rain? Claire... It is a very long post for sure. :-) I think all this rain is great for a new garden. I put in new shrubs last spring and then got hit with drought for 2 months. I barely kept up with the watering enough, and this year, they are loving all this rain. So are my trees that got hit with caterpillars bad this spring. DtD... I am glad to hear you had improvement with adding compost. It seems like compost is the cure for everything. [g] You must have a lot of shrubs to end up with that many trimmings. Ego... This year, I don't have much to deadhead yet, with all this rain. [g] Thanks for the reminder to try to keep out of the beds when they are wet. drippy... looking out my window this morning, it looks so still and dark, with no air moving at all. Sooner or later, we are bound to have sun again..and then probably no rain the rest of the summer. lol So, deadheading, pruning, weeding, transplanting with bagged potting soil. I am all for it. I love being out in the rain. I just have some lingering concerns about whether the pruning, deadheading can spread disease. What about something like Hollyhocks that often have rust? Would touching those leaves and then touching other plants spread that? I know with tomato plants, I have read not to touch the leaves while wet so as not to spread disease. Isn't this the type of weather the kind that promotes tomato diseases? I noticed some of the lower leaves on one tomato yesterday looking a little funky, even though they have been mulched. That and the zinnias I had last year were very mildewy, so if I don't have obvious problems like rust on Hollyhocks or mildew on zinnias, is that something I should be concerned about? Speaking of boots...really pretty blue color. Does anyone have any particular brand of clogs/rain boots that they prefer? So did we cover all the bases, of what everyone is doing in the garden during the rain? Any other jobs that you attempt to do in the rain? [g] Has anyone heard of a 'rain garden'?

Az-very interesting, but I think I have this quite well figured out. For the home gardener with a mixed bag of crop - it's all worthless The item that caught my attention was your reaction to the figures I put up from Brian & Darren and the comparison to Bernie. When compared to the ref. for Wiki, and the information that it contained, the figures varied. What I see - the base sat. MAY be of value, but only to specific crop. All the research was on a singular and certainly did not take into account all the possible variables but all came up with a 60-80Ca./0-20mg. Where did the Hefty's come up with 65-85 and 6-12? I am guessing that it may be the figures for corn & soy as it's fairly far off the academic consensus and if so, it had to be obtained by trial & error. Maybe they know something? Whatever the case as I grow corn,lettuce,cukes,tomatos,sweetpotato,chives,peppers,onions,tobacco,& on occasion, others - it's useless on my part. In June I am 24 years retired and my only goals these days are to TRY to get some of the local small part time farmers and hay field people to stop tossing money. These people do not do any kind of testing and do as "been doing". Yup, the guys doing hayfields & pasture use 19-19-19 and the other bcast AFTER they till. I use the heading " you are tossing money" and nothing else. It does get some attention - skeptics abound. Again, thanx for the followup but it's been my results in my backyard that has gotten the initial attention. Garden is 3,000 sq.ft.

The question I have is about the accuracy of old surveys, and where the legality is. The most extreme example of this is the old description of a county boundary. This is describing a boundary creating a new county out of part of Clinton County: "Be it enacted by the People of the State of New York represented in Senate and Assembly, That all of that part of the County of Clinton lying south of a line beginning at the south west corner of the town of Peru, and running from thence easterly along the south line of said town until it intersects the great river Ausable, from thence along the north bank of the south branch of said river until it strikes Lake Champlain...". (The text here continues for quite awhile, but my point is made here). The point is that now, that county line runs at an azimuth of approximately 83 degrees (due east is 90 degrees). This Act was passed in 1799. I thought that the surveyors then didn't know about magnetic declination, and that these descriptions were based on magnetic north, not geographic north, as modern surveys are made, but the error is about 7 degrees, while the magnetic declination correction was about 11 degrees then (in 1983 it was 14 degrees 3 minutes). So, I have two general questions: 1. in such cases as this, were subsequent acts passed to correct the description? I assume that the original description is recognized as being in error. 2. Or, are the monuments placed in 1799 now the defining description and a new survey would (and probably was) made to give the precise description. I attach below the map of the new county: I apologize for hijacking this thread, but I could not figure out how to create a new one for this subject. Now, I copy here a portion of the deed for some property I purchased in 2013: "ALL THAT CERTAIN PARCEL OF LAND being located in the Town of Elizabethtown, County of Essex, State of New York, being part of the property described.... BEGINNING at a found 3/4" iron rod in concrete 0.1' below grade located at the northwest corner of the herein described parcel and the southwest corner of (someone else's property), said iron rod being located on the easterly assumed road bounds of .... road, as shown on Essex County File Map No. ---, said iron rod being also located S20*59'01" as referenced to New York State Grid North by 1983 Datum by GPS observations a distance of 250.34 feet along said rod bound from a capped iron road locate at the southwest corner of (someone else's property) and running: 1....." Following here is the description of the entire plot, ending with "7. N20*01'25" E 303.43 feet to the point of the beginning containing 15.0 acres, more or less, with the above described bounds." The two points I make here is the reference to "found rods", and the quoted accuracy of the measurements. Can a surveyor make measurements this accurate? The distances are quoted to 1/100 of a foot, which is about an eighth of an inch, and do typical surveying instruments even register one second of arc? Comments from professional surveyors, please.