Maddie's Conclusion

    These experiments seemed like they were going to be a lot of work at first, but the experiments weren't that hard and it was fun to find out what is really in your soil and if it is good soil for planting. This lab has taught me that soil is not just dirt, but really it is living and has several components. Before this lab, I wouldn't have even have thought that soil has pH levels or little micro-organisms living inside but soil does. It has taught me that soil is not easy to take care of soil and to have the best crops you need to have the best soil. There are tons of things to add to your soil such as clay, soil, silt, manure, organic matter, and much more to try and get your soil perfect but it is very hard to make sure you add correct amounts of everything and especially with manure because you don't know exact amounts of nutrients in there. I would have thought that since we all got our soil from Lake Zurich that we would have reasonably the same amounts of clay, sand, and silt but that wasn't true. My group was almost all clay while other groups were more sand or silt or at an equilibrium. This also explains why some states are much better at farming because there are a ton of different soils out there and each area can have different soil. I hope that people will look into soil more and try to learn more about it because it is everywhere and there really is so many things to test on soil and so many different kinds. Also, people need to know to not just look at soil as just invaluable dirt because soil is living and is the foundation of Earth.