For me, gardening is a sensual experience. It’s a visual delight of orange carrots, yellow squash, red tomatoes, green beans and red radishes. It’s the smell of freshly turned soil. It’s the sound of birds competing for their breakfast as I walk through the misty morning light to pick the squash bug eggs off my plants. And, it’s the feel of the straw as I pull it apart and spread it on the soil for mulch.

Gardening engages all our senses, but its textures can be especially appealing. Have you ever run your fingers over sage and felt its soft, furry leaves? Or, run your hands over rough squash leaves or the fascinating embossed veins of a tomato leaf? But before you can experience all of these textures, you must first engage with the textures of your soil.

Soil is the Earth’s version of skin, covering our land and going into the ground only a few inches to a few feet. Earthworms, our gardens’ most valued residents, live in healthy soil, along with ants, mites, nematodes, slugs, snails, spiders and important microorganisms that also call it home.

This outer layer of “skin” is called topsoil, and it includes the nutrient-rich remains of dead and decaying organisms. The topsoil merges with mineral subsoil beneath. Subsoil is lower in organic matter but contains many elements needed by plants—nitrogen, phosphorous and trace elements like calcium and magnesium. Minerals released from above gather here as water drains down. Plant roots come looking for water and pick up their healthy doses of minerals, too.

Below these layers lies bedrock, or solid rock material. The inorganic or mineral matter in the subsoil is made by the decomposition of rocks through years of weathering, or from rocks ground by glaciers into gravel, sand and clay.

The mineral particles in soils are classified according to size into three principal groups: sand, silt and clay. I grew up near my grandparents’ farm in East Tennessee. I remember when my grandpa would take me along to visit other farmers in the field; he would pick up a handful of turned soil and run it though his fingers, feeling for its quality. Through this experience with the soil’s texture, he could tell a lot about its composition.

My grandfather didn’t have special powers. You can tell a lot about your soil just through touch, too. Try this: moisten a handful of soil and knead it into a ball in your hand. If it makes a firm, sticky ball that holds the imprint of your fingers after you squeeze it and leaves a stain on your hand, it’s clay. If it feels gritty and you can’t form a ball with it, the soil is sandy. If it feels soapy, but not sticky, and doesn’t stain your hand, it’s silt.

Most soil contains particles of all three but has a higher percentage of one. Some combinations favor plant life better than others. Much like our own skin, soil has pores, or spaces between the particles, that allow the soil to breathe and water to circulate. Clay soil has poor drainage and doesn’t hold nutrients. Sandy soil has a lot of space between particles and drains too fast. Since it doesn’t hold water, nutrients get washed away. Silt soil drains well and holds nutrients. It’s generally the best farmland; however, it can become compacted and erodes quickly.

Loamy soil is the best type for our gardens. It contains a relatively even combination of clay, silt and sand particles. It retains water and nutrients but drains well, too. Loam is soft and friable (crumbly) with a slightly gritty feel, yet smooth and somewhat sticky when moist.

Don’t have loamy soil for your garden? Don’t despair. You can improve your soil by mimicking Mother Nature. Adding plenty of organic material, like plants and animals in various states of decomposition, will provide nutrients for your soil and improve its texture.

You can get that organic material by building a compost bin: add your kitchen leftovers, grass clippings and leaves. Compost is the best form of organic matter. It encourages microorganism activity that causes soil particles to clump together and form aggregates. The aggregates, or microscopic pores, are the spaces in the soil that increase its drainage ability. This is especially beneficial for clay soils. Other forms of organic matter are animal manures that have been aged for six months to a year and peat moss. If you can’t compost, you can buy bagged, composted soils and animal manure at your local garden or hardware store.

Building healthy soil is an ongoing process. Getting familiar with its texture is only the first step, but it’s truly the most important if you want to enjoy all the other wonderful sensual delights a garden can offer. So, let your skin caress the skin of the Earth, and work with it to create nourishment not only for your belly, but also for your eyes, ears and nostrils!

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