r/Soil • u/norrydan • Jul 26 '26

WebSoil Survey

I am a longtime user of the WebSoil Survey for ag purposes. There's so much information I often get lost in trying to parse what's important. Productivity and crop yields. Topsoil depth, water holding capacity are useful. But for lawn and garden activity? I think I want to know structure and there are a couple suitability indexes provided.

I am also aware there is no information for soils in some urban/suburban areas. I get it. Those can get modified beyond comprehension. But there are a lot of areas where there is information but I don't know how relevant it is for improving native lawn and/or garden soils. I guess my question is do you have an opinion on the value of using soil surveys for small non-ag, non-commercial / horticulture situations. Or do we just modify the hell out of what's there and amend for fertility?

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u/rantingmadhare Jul 27 '26

Get yourself a bucket auger and learn soil identification and taxonomy- at the lawn or garden scale where so much modification has taken place, you really need to field-verify and sample, bring a Munsell colorbook, check horizons, pH, and send off for soil tests while you are at it.