All great suggestions. I've heard of the bucket test, and will definitely give that a try when I get some time to go dig a bunch of holes. It's about a 15 minute drive out to my land, and work and family life has been a little busier than usual.
In addition to the bucket test, a family member teachers in the sciences, and has alot of extra graduated cylinders that I can have as well. I've seen one way to test the soil is by placing the soil, with water, into the cylinder. Shake it to completely disperse the particles, and let it settle for a few hours. The sand sinks first, then the silt, and the suspended clay particles eventually settle on top. Using the measurements on the cylinder will give the percentages of sand, silt, and clay.
I tried it last night in my back yard (here in the city, not out on my land where I want to build a pond) with just some water bottles, and it looks like near some hops that I'm growing in containers, I have about 23% clay, and near my garden, it's around 19% clay.
I'm curious now to go out on the land and give this a test. Last night as I was laying in bed, I was thinking about using a long drill bit of some sort to drill test holes my 2 or 3 feet deep to quickly get a bunch of samples. Has anyone ever done this?
