Soil Texture Essay

The texture refers to the structure of the soil in relation to small, medium or large particles in a specific soil mass (Ball 2001). Soil texture is classified based on the amount of sand, silt and clay present in a soil sample (Schoonover & Crim 2015). A coarse soil is a sand or loamy soil, a medium soil is a loam, silt loam or silt whereas a fine soil is a sandy clay, silty clay or just clay (Ball 2001). The particles of the clay are very small which means they have a large surface area (What is Soil Texture? 2017). Due to the surface area, the water gets stuck well to the clay and its ability to retain moisture gets high (What is Soil Texture? 2017). If the surface area is high, more area is available for positively charged plant nutrients

Salt problems are rare and temporary and ions such as chloride, hydrogen carbonate, sodium, magnesium, nitrate or potassium contribute to soil salinity (Bernstein 1975). The salts of these ions are in high concentrations (Bernstein 1975). The salts may come from irrigation water, fertilizers, composts and manure (Soil Chemical Properties 2004). Salinity of soil has an affect on plant growth. The plants that are affected by salinity tend to grow slowly and are often smaller in size and the leaves of the plants are small but may be thicker compared to the normal plants (Bernstein 1975). Salt sensitive plants are less able to uptake water from saline soils and because of this they can become water stressed (Saline Soils and Plant Growth 2017). Salt tolerant plants respond to saline soils differently than the salt sensitive ones. Leaves of plants affected by salt have a darker green colour than the normal plants (Bernstein 1975). Some salt tolerant plants do not uptake excess salts while others uptake excess salts but then they pass them through their leaves (Saline Soils and Plant Growth 2017). While salinity is one chemical property that can damage plants the other one is organic