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Water ➡️ Light ➡️ *Soil* ➡️ Temperature

⌛Time estimate: 10 minutes

🔊 Prefer to listen to the audio version of this section? Click over here to play it! 👂 ➡️

https://soundcloud.com/junior-jardinero/chapter-2-section-3-soil?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

<aside> ❓ Have you ever had a parent or teacher tell you to wipe your shoes👟 off before coming inside? Next time this happens, really look at what’s on your shoes. It might just look like dirt, but it is actually soil! 🤗

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Why is Soil So Important?

Soil is necessary for all life on earth! Soil gives your plant many things it needs to grow like vitamins , protection, water, and oxygen 🌬️.

Without good soil, we wouldn’t have any food! 🌽

<aside> 💡 There are three different types of soil - clay, silt, and sand! All soil is made up of small broken up rocks. The different types of soil comes from the different sizes of rocks in them!

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• [ ] Activity: 🖍️ Draw what you think soil looks like in your field journal!

1. Sand

If you have ever been to the beach 🏖️ you have experienced this type of soil! Sand is a bunch of tiny tiny rocks 🪨 all mixed together.

• Why doesn’t sand work well for plants?

2. Silt

Silt has smaller rock particles than sand does, so it is able to hold more water than sand. Silt is mainly found near rivers 🌊.

• How is silt created?

3. Clay

🪨 Clay has even smaller rock particles than silt - in fact it has the smallest of all the soil types! Because the clay particles are so tiny, they stick closely together and do not let any water through. 💦 This is not good for our plants because we need a soil type that can allow water to come in! ❌

• [ ] Activity: Take a small pinch of soil out of your garden and place it in your hand. ❓Can you tell what type of soil it is? Or is it a mixture of different kinds of soil? 🧐 Draw what it feels like to you in your journal! 📗

<aside> 💡 The soil you have in your garden is an equal part mixture of all the different soil types - clay, sand, and silt! This mixture is called loam, and it allows for the perfect home for your plants to grow in.

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