On Tue, 06 Sep 2016 12:17:55 -0700, Oren wrote:

Testing. Loamy soil gives you Oxygen, amend nutrients, etc.

Do you think this soil is "loamy"?
To me, loamy means loose and airy.
It seems clumpy to me.

Your soil is much darker than mine, here in the desert.

Interesting. Darker? This is coffee colored. The classic rock out here is
red chert. It's really mud from the ocean. It's only about 30 million years
old, which is relatively young stuff (as geology goes).

Raised beds
are recommend here as the ground is not the best medium to grow
vegetables or herbs.

Hmmm... what does the extra foot in the air get you?
Why raise the beds?


UCLA ought to have a local co-operative agricultural extension
offices. Testing a soil sample likely would ask for samples from
different areas to get a better idea (balance). Several plastic lunch
bags with a number of tablespoons of soil to test from different
areas.

I'm up in the Santa Cruz area, so maybe the Santa Cruz UC will have that.
I'll check.

http://eps.ucsc.edu/research/facilit...chem-rock.html

They seem to have good contact information:
http://eps.ucsc.edu/about/contact-visitors.html

Heck, they even have a "Household Archeology Lab"!
http://anthro.ucsc.edu/labs/lab-operations/index.html