Soil Texture Triangle

Soil texture triangle

Name your soil from its sand, silt and clay.

Move the three sliders to your lab result. The triangle names the texture class and tells you how much water that soil can hold for the crop, how fast water enters it, and how narrow its working window is.

All 12 USDA classes Nothing to upload No signup Runs entirely in your browser
Soil texture triangle with the current mix marked sand loamy sand sandy loam loam silt loam silt sandy clay loam clay loam silty clay loam sandy clay silty clay clay 20 80 20 40 60 40 60 40 60 80 20 80 sand loamy sand sandy loam loam silt loam silt sandy clay loam clay loam silty clay loam sandy clay silty clay clay clay % silt % sand %

Click anywhere on the triangle to read off that mix, or set the three sliders.

Your lab result
40%
40%
20%

Texture is one point. A field has many, and they move the rate you should apply.

See texture across a whole field
sanddrains fast and holds little water
loamy sandstill very sandy, slightly more holding
sandy loameasy to work, moderate holding
loamthe balanced texture most crops prefer
silt loamholds a lot of water, caps when bare
silthigh holding, weak structure
sandy clay loamsandy feel with enough clay to bind
clay loamgood holding, needs the right moisture to work
silty clay loamholds well, slow to dry
sandy clayclay behaviour with a sandy skeleton
silty clayheavy, slow to drain
clayheaviest, strong shrink and swell

Frequently asked questions

How do I read the soil texture triangle?

Sand runs along the bottom edge and increases to the left, clay runs up the left edge, and silt runs down the right edge. Your three percentages meet at one point, and the region that point falls in is the texture class.

You do not have to plot it by hand here. Move the sliders, or click anywhere on the triangle and the three values are read back off the point you clicked.

Where do I get my sand, silt and clay percentages?

From a standard particle-size analysis, which most soil laboratories report on the same sheet as pH, organic matter and nutrients. It is often listed as texture, mechanical analysis or PSA.

A hand texture assessment in the field gives you a class directly but not the percentages. If that is all you have, pick the class on the triangle and read the field behaviour from there.

Why does soil texture change the rates I should apply?

Texture sets how much water the soil can hold for the crop and how fast water enters it, which in turn drives leaching risk, the working window, and how easily the soil compacts.

A sandy soil holds 60 to 80 mm of plant available water per metre and leaches nitrogen readily, so it rewards splitting applications. A clay holds twice that but drains slowly and compacts when worked wet. The same blanket rate does different things on each.

Which classification does this use?

The twelve USDA texture classes, using the published boundaries. The tool is tested against reference compositions for all twelve, and against every whole-percent combination, so no mix falls outside a class and the drawn regions agree with the classification.

Does anything I enter leave my browser?

No. There is nothing to upload and nothing is sent anywhere. The three percentages exist only on your device, and closing the page discards them.

Bigger picture? GeoPard turns the data into prescriptions.

This page reads one file at a time. The full GeoPard platform combines multi-year yield, NDVI, soil, and topography into management zones, generates variable rate prescriptions, and pushes them to your machine.

Push prescriptions and pull as-applied data with:
John Deere Operations Center CNH FieldOps AGCO / PTx FarmEngage
Register free in GeoPard →

Already harvested? See whether the variable rate paid off in the Automated Yield Report.

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