A Cubic Foot of Soil... (Test Prep)

If I took a cubic foot of soil as well as the plants growing there, I would expect to see many different organisms as soil is the essence of life. I would definitely expect to see earthworms breaking up and loosening in the soil; ants taking various things from above ground back into the soil (and therefore providing the soil with a variety of nutrients indirectly); grubs eating roots of plants which will slowly kill them (and when the plant die, and grubs die, they give nutrients back to the soil when by decomposing); pill bugs; centipedes; and millipedes, though I am not sure what either of these three organisms contribute; and various microbes that do a variety of different jobs. Most of the jobs performed by all of thee organisms help to create a richer soil in exchange for killing what lived in the soil before, however the soil that results from these jobs allows new plants and organisms to not only grow, but thrive in this rich new earth. The soil in our garden seems rather hard to me and because silt and clay have properties that allow them to condense and harden, I would say that our soil would be a silty clay loam (40% silt, 40% clay, 20% loam). This would likely be better to support trees and bushes which have stronger roots as those roots would have an easier time plowing through the hard soil and receiving the large amount of nutrients that come with silt and clay that does not come with sand. More delicate plants such as flowers or grass would have a harder time with this soil and so we would need to break it up and loosen it a lot. The limitation to this soil is also in the fact that it is mostly silt and clay. Neither silt nor clay creates a loose soil and so would trap water easily.