This video will show you a way to measure the amount of sand, silt and clay in your soil, and then help you figure out your soil type.

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Understanding Soil Types and Soil Texture (test your own soil)

Today I’ll show you a simple way to measure the amount of sand, silt and clay in your soil. I’ll also show you how to use the soil texture triangle to figure out the type of soil you have.

This information will help select the right plants, or if you are trying to figure out why certain plants are not growing well. This information will also help you select the right amount of fertilizer and water for your garden.


You will need a clear container. An old jar works well. Try to get one with vertical sides, and a flat bottom. I am going to use an old peanut butter container. The bottom is not perfectly flat but it is good enough for this test.

Take the soil and add it to the jar so that it is about ¾ full.
Now add water to almost fill the jar. You want to leave some air space at the top of the jar for mixing.
Place the lid on the jar…. Then shake. Let it sit undisturbed.
Let the jar sit for 1 minute.

Since sand is heavier than silt and clay it settles in less than a minute.
Wait 1 hour. Silt is heavier than clay, and will settle next.
Wait 24 hours for the clay to settle. Since clay is made up of very fine particles it take a long time to settle.
I’ve emptied the jar, and can now see the marks very clearly.
Take a ruler and measure the distance between the marks.
Working in mm will make the math easier than using inches.

Calculations and soil texture
The next step in the process is to calculate the percent of sand, silt and clay in your soil. This is easily done and I will show you exactly how to do it.

The soil texture, by definition, consists of sand, silt and clay, and those three parts added together make up 100%.
In our experiment we measured the amounts using millimeters but the units don’t matter since we will be converting them to a percent. Sand had a value of 30, Silt was 22, and clay was 25, with a total of 77.

To convert these numbers to % we do the following calculation.
% sand is equal to 30 divided by 77 times 100, or 39%.......
% silt is equal to 22divided by 77 times 100, which is 29%. I’m rounding to whole numbers which is accurate enough for gardening.
% clay is 25 divided by 77 or 32%. ……You can see that the sum of the three values equals 100%.

These numbers tell you how much sand, silt or clay you have, but we can take this one step further and figure out the type of soil you have.

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