Soil contains a considerable fraction of Earth's organic carbon. Bacterial growth and mortality drive the microbial carbon pump, influencing carbon use efficiency and necromass production, key determinants for organic carbon persistence in soils. However, bacterial growth dynamics in soil are poorly characterized. We used an internal standard approach to normalize 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing data allowing us to quantify growth dynamics for 30 days following plant litter input to soil. We show that clustering taxa into three groups optimized variation of bacterial growth parameters in situ. These three clusters differed significantly with respect to their lag time, growth rate, growth duration, and change in abundance due to growth (ΔN