Maybe you could research the possibility of growing alfalfa, known for extremely deep roots. Just a thought. Maureen

There are soils, and then there are other soils. I live in an alkaline desert, were we worry, for hundreds of miles around, about the top four inches, because whats under that, well, ya just don' wanna know. Sandstone, slate, some mix of glacial till / clay, what ever.. living out here on the cutting edge (geologically speaking) of soil formation. A few million years younger than where you live.

So, a few years back, one of the local gourmet garden shoppes was selling these $20 two pronged soil probes, that would give the pH, moisture, N, and so on.

The joke was that if you couldn't manage to put the probe into the ground without bending it, then you prolly needed to water a bit.

Besides a shallow soil, in the deeper areas it was very difficult to push the probe in and then to get it out. Very compacted soil it appears.

Something's wrong with that first sentence but I get the drift. I don't think this is a very good test of compaction. It might be a test of dryness, but not compaction.

Try this. Cover the soil with 3 - 4 inches of mulch for three months and try your experiment again. If you don't want to wait that long, put a black soaker hose on the area and let it run day and night for a week. Turn the faucet on so that only a trickle of water comes out at the faucet. This results in a v-e-r-y slow drip out of the hose. That's what you want. After a week if the soil is not more penetrable, let the water run another week. I have done this for three week periods and gotten soil that was so soft to walk on that it felt a little uneasy. It was not soggy at all, just soft.

dchall

When I did the probe it had rained for a week. Not all areas where difficult to push in the probe.

I once tried that test where you put soil in a jar and let it settle. Then measure the layers. Looked forward to seeing the results only to find that the layers if they where there were so tiny you couldn't see them. Need to try it again with a much larger sample.

The soil in my area, Upstate NY near Albany, seems generally poor. I grow mostly roses and there are hardly any other rose gardens locally. Farming traditionally has been dairy where most any soil will grow grass. Some apple orchards.

Part of it must be underlying rock layers as in my garden where there is a shale outcrop next to a rose bed.

You are looking at soil condition much too deep. The vast majority of your plants roots and the vast majority of the soil microbes will be in the top 6 to 8 inches and that is where you should be concentrating your efforts. Over time, as you add organic matter, the earthworms will move some of that organic matter further down but since the aerobic bacteria will not work 12 to 24 inches down, and few plant roots get that deep, work on the top.
The jar test is meant to look at the top 6 to 8 inches.

I'm attaching a link about New York geology for whatever it is worth to you. Maybe other varieties of roses would do better?

Here is a link that might be useful: New York Geology

Great idea using a probe, heres a professional quality one available on amazon in case you don't have the resources to make your own

http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Soil-Probe-Container-Interior/dp/B00MHN14O4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438842155&sr=8-1&keywords=soil+probe+interior

On the topic of bending tools: the other night I was digging up garlic since the tops had died off and it was getting hot and dry out. I bent a trowel in the top couple inches of clay. Decided at that point I might need to water a bit. And this was the amended clay in a 6" raised bed...