The Story a Stalk of Celery Can Tell About Soil.

The following soil story is from Dr. Ray Weil, a soil sceintist from the University of Maryland.

Here is a photo of a stalk of celery being cut in my kitchen. My finger shows the kind of soil that was between the celery stalks near their base. This soil was very black and smeared out smoothly between the fingers, indicating that it is from an organic sil (Histisol) probably in New York State where the glaciers left lakes that turned into marshes with organic soils. I always check for the soil on fresh vegetables to see where they may have been grown. Most vegetables grown in the southern coastal plain region, for example, Georgia nd Florida, have gritty sandy soil on them (that's why so many kids hate spinach--it's the unconfortable feeling of gritty sand between the teeth, not the spinach itself that people dislike). A package of dry pinto beans will often contain one or two lumps of soil that escaped the cleaning machine by being about the size of a bean. Crumble this soil 'bean' and wet it and you will ususally find that it is sticky clay from the 'thumb' region of Michigan where clay soils developed on lake sediments near the present great lakes.