It was the final day of field sampling today. A large group of us met up at one of the barley plots on a lovely sunny morning and split into small teams. Tim and Laurie used a penetrometer to measure how hard the soil was, Paul and Naveed took some more soil core samples, Nico and Glyn collected small soil samples with roots, which it was my job to coat with plaster of paris to protect them. This was a tricky job as the soil samples were very fragile and the plaster of paris dried very quickly.
The sampling started off well, although having spent so much time in the lab looking a idealised soil samples, we had forgotten that real soil in fields contains stones, which can make sampling challenging.
It was great to be outside in the sunshine, however, it began to rain. We all carried on with our task, but as my hands got cold the coatings of plaster of paris I was applying got messier!
After lunch the sun came out again. Nico and I moved to the second barley plot to collect samples from there. The soil in this plot was more crumbly that the first as it contained less clay. The soil samples were so fragile Nico couldn't even lift them from the soil without them collapsing. So we tried putting on the plaster of paris while they were still in the field. This was very tricky and was virtually impossible to do without disturbing the soil. In the end we gave up as we were damaging the sample too much while trying to preserve them.
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