Jeff Hill is a professional agronomist passionate about biology and nature.
Most of the living soil is invisible to a naked human eye. However, you can see relatively big living organisms such as earthworms and spiders. The soil ecosystem is extremely interconnected. This is why the living soil visible to the human eye can give you a great indication about the much greater number of living organisms that you can’t see without a microscope. This is why a simple count of the number of ants, spiders, worms and termites in a handful of soil can tell you how well your soil is doing.
It is better to have such counts when soil organisms are at the peak of their activities. This happens when the soil is in the perfect condition: not too dry, not too wet, not too cold, not too hot. Mid-spring and mid-fall are great times for such measurements and counts. Dig a shovel of soil. Drop it on a white material to make counting easy. A piece of poster board or a white sheet of paper would work great for this task. Break the soil apart and carefully inspect it. Count the number of different living creatures that you will encounter. Termites and spiders usually move very fast, so you need to count quickly.
You don’t need to know the names of all the species that you encounter. It suffices to count the number of different types. Generally speaking, a soil is healthy when you can see three or more representatives of three or more types of soil organisms within two to four minutes, says Jeff Hill.
Jeff Hill 