This Soil Health Minute is brought to you by the Clear Creek Conservation District
Beginning October 1, CCCD is offering a daily tidbit of soil information to help inform YOU about soil health. As always, if you have any questions, we would be glad to help you out!
November 3, 2020
Here is a great YouTube channel to subscribe to! Dr. Caitlin Youngquist has it all here!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgzaHXAnS6QpDv_snx0ibGg/playlists
November 2, 2020
Here is a printable guide for you!
Reducing Risk through Best Soil Health Management Practices
Lists multiple resources including some specifically for the western states
https://ofrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/OFRFRMAGuide.pdf
October 30, 2020
Keep the Soil Covered as Much as PossibleSoil cover conserves moisture, reduces temperature, intercepts raindrops (to reduce their destructive impact), suppresses weed growth, and provides habitat for members of the soil food web that spend at least some of their time above ground. This is true regardless of land use (cropland, hayland, pasture, or range). Keeping the soil covered while allowing crop residues to decompose (so their nutrients can be cycled back into the soil) can be a bit of a balancing act. Producers must give careful consideration to their crop rotation (including any cover crops) and residue management if they are to keep the soil covered and fed at the same time.
October 29, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsCrop RotationDiversity can be improved with cash crops as well as cover crops. Diverse crop rotations can reduce pests and diseases that are specific to certain plant species, build the health of soil microbes that provide nutrients to your plants and ultimately lead to improved yields.
https://youtu.be/wqRh6pNBObw
October 28, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsRotational GrazingGrazing animals recycle nutrients across the landscape. By managing your livestock to graze where and when you want, you can return valuable nutrients and organic matter back to your land and ultimately your soil.
https://youtu.be/JOiyO31rOis
October 27, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsCover CropsThough not typically harvested for a profit, cover crops still provide valuable services to your operation. The roots of cover crops make channels in the soil that improves its ability to take in water. Cover crops also build soil organic matter, hold soil in place that might otherwise erode, and feed soil organisms that provide valuable nutrients to cash crops during the traditional growing season.
https://youtu.be/NLoEkcbsJLo
October 26, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsNo Till or Reduced TillWe’ve learned that most operations do not need heavy tillage – or often any tillage at all – to produce healthy crops. Minimizing tillage can reduce soil erosion across your operation while saving time and money. Read the USDA blog story: Saving Money, Time and Soil: The Economics of No-Till Farming.
https://youtu.be/DBYeb66dN80
October 23, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMaximize Presence of Living RootsLiving roots reduce soil erosion and provide food for organisms like earthworms and microbes that cycle the nutrients you plants need.
October 22, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMaximize BiodiversityIncreasing diversity across your operation can break disease cycles, stimulate plant growth, and provide habitat for pollinators and organisms living in your soil.
October 21, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMaximize Soil CoverAs a general rule, soil should be covered whenever possible. You can plant cover crops as part of both grazing and cropland operations.
To maximize soil cover year round, you can:
October 20, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMinimize DisturbanceFrom hooves to plows, soil is disturbed in many ways. While some disturbance is unavoidable, minimizing disturbance events across your operation builds healthier soils.
To minimize disturbance of your soil, you can:
October 19, 2020
Keep a Living Root Growing Throughout the YearLiving plants maintain a rhizosphere, an area of concentrated microbial activity close to the root. The rhizosphere is the most active part of the soil ecosystem because it is where the most readily available food is, and where peak nutrient and water cycling occurs. Microbial food is exuded by plant roots to attract and feed microbes that provide nutrients (and other compounds) to the plant at the root-soil interface where the plants can take them up. Since living roots provide the easiest source of food for soil microbes, growing long-season crops or a cover crop following a short-season crop, feeds the foundation species of the soil food web as much as possible during the growing season.
Healthy soil is dependent upon how well the soil food web is fed. Providing plenty of easily accessible food to soil microbes helps them cycle nutrients that plants need to grow. Sugars from living plant roots, recently dead plant roots, crop residues, and soil organic matter all feed the many and varied members of the soil food web.
October 16, 2020
Diversify Soil Biota with Plant DiversityPlants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates that serve as the building blocks for roots, stems, leaves, and seeds. They also interact with specific soil microbes by releasing carbohydrates (sugars) through their roots into the soil to feed the microbes in exchange for nutrients and water. A diversity of plant carbohydrates is required to support the diversity of soil microorganisms in the soil. In order to achieve a high level of diversity, different plants must be grown. The key to improving soil health is ensuring that food and energy chains and webs consist of several types of plants or animals, not just one or two.
Biodiversity is ultimately the key to the success of any agricultural system. Lack of biodiversity severely limits the potential of any cropping system and increases disease and pest problems. A diverse and fully functioning soil food web provides for nutrient, energy, and water cycling that allows a soil to express its full potential. Increasing the diversity of a crop rotation and cover crops increases soil health and soil function, reduces input costs, and increases profitability.
October 15, 2020
Manage More by Disturbing Soil LessSoil disturbance can be the result of physical, chemical or biological activities. Physical soil disturbance, such as tillage, results in bare and/or compacted soil that is destructive and disruptive to soil microbes, and it creates a hostile environment for them to live. Misapplication of farm inputs can disrupt the symbiotic relationships between fungi, other microorganisms, and plant roots. Overgrazing, a form of biological disturbance, reduces root mass, increases runoff, and increases soil temperature. All forms of soil disturbance diminish habitat for soil microbes and result in a diminished soil food web.
October 14, 2020
Soil Health Management
crop residue management improves soil quality
Soil works for you if you work for the soil by using management practices that improve soil health and increase productivity and profitability immediately and into the future. A fully functioning soil produces the maximum amount of products at the least cost. Maximizing soil health is essential to maximizing profitability. Soil will not work for you if you abuse it.
Managing for soil health (improved soil function) is mostly a matter of maintaining suitable habitat for the myriad of creatures that comprise the soil food web. This can be accomplished by disturbing the soil as little as possible, growing as many different species of plants as practical, keeping living plants in the soil as often as possible, and keeping the soil covered all the time
October 13, 2020
Soil Health Assessment
conservationists learn how to assess soil quality
Soil health is an assessment of how well soil performs all of its functions now and how those functions are being preserved for future use. Soil health cannot be determined by measuring only crop yield, water quality, or any other single outcome. Soil health cannot be measured directly, so we evaluate indicators.
Useful indicators:
Indicator Examples and Relationship to Soil Health
October 9, 2020
Inherent and Dynamic Properties of SoilSoil has both inherent and dynamic properties, or qualities. Inherent soil quality is a soil’s natural ability to function. For example, sandy soil drains faster than clayey soil. Deep soil has more room for roots than soils with bedrock near the surface. These characteristics do not change easily.
Dynamic soil quality is how soil changes depending on how it is managed. Management choices affect the amount of soil organic matter, soil structure, soil depth, and water and nutrient holding capacity. One goal of soil health research is to learn how to manage soil in a way that improves soil function. Soils respond differently to management depending on the inherent properties of the soil and the surrounding landscape.
Understanding soil health means assessing and managing soil so that it functions optimally now and is not degraded for future use. By monitoring changes in soil health, a land manager can determine if a set of practices is sustainable. See Soil Health Assessment and Soil Health Management principles for soil health for more information.
October 8, 2020
What Soil Does Healthy soil gives us clean air and water, bountiful crops and forests, productive grazing lands, diverse wildlife, and beautiful landscapes. Soil does all this by performing five essential functions:
October 7, 2020
Healthy Soil for LifeSoil health, also referred to as soil quality, is defined as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. This definition speaks to the importance of managing soils so they are sustainable for future generations. To do this, we need to remember that soil contains living organisms that when provided the basic necessities of life - food, shelter, and water - perform functions required to produce food and fiber.
Only "living" things can have health, so viewing soil as a living ecosystem reflects a fundamental shift in the way we care for our nation's soils. Soil isn’t an inert growing medium, but rather is teaming with billions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that are the foundation of an elegant symbiotic ecosystem. Soil is an ecosystem that can be managed to provide nutrients for plant growth, absorb and hold rainwater for use during dryer periods, filter and buffer potential pollutants from leaving our fields, serve as a firm foundation for agricultural activities, and provide habitat for soil microbes to flourish and diversify to keep the ecosystem running smoothly.
Here is a great YouTube channel to subscribe to! Dr. Caitlin Youngquist has it all here!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgzaHXAnS6QpDv_snx0ibGg/playlists
November 2, 2020
Here is a printable guide for you!
Reducing Risk through Best Soil Health Management Practices
Lists multiple resources including some specifically for the western states
https://ofrf.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/OFRFRMAGuide.pdf
October 30, 2020
Keep the Soil Covered as Much as PossibleSoil cover conserves moisture, reduces temperature, intercepts raindrops (to reduce their destructive impact), suppresses weed growth, and provides habitat for members of the soil food web that spend at least some of their time above ground. This is true regardless of land use (cropland, hayland, pasture, or range). Keeping the soil covered while allowing crop residues to decompose (so their nutrients can be cycled back into the soil) can be a bit of a balancing act. Producers must give careful consideration to their crop rotation (including any cover crops) and residue management if they are to keep the soil covered and fed at the same time.
October 29, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsCrop RotationDiversity can be improved with cash crops as well as cover crops. Diverse crop rotations can reduce pests and diseases that are specific to certain plant species, build the health of soil microbes that provide nutrients to your plants and ultimately lead to improved yields.
https://youtu.be/wqRh6pNBObw
October 28, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsRotational GrazingGrazing animals recycle nutrients across the landscape. By managing your livestock to graze where and when you want, you can return valuable nutrients and organic matter back to your land and ultimately your soil.
https://youtu.be/JOiyO31rOis
October 27, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsCover CropsThough not typically harvested for a profit, cover crops still provide valuable services to your operation. The roots of cover crops make channels in the soil that improves its ability to take in water. Cover crops also build soil organic matter, hold soil in place that might otherwise erode, and feed soil organisms that provide valuable nutrients to cash crops during the traditional growing season.
https://youtu.be/NLoEkcbsJLo
October 26, 2020
Soil Health Practices for Working LandsNo Till or Reduced TillWe’ve learned that most operations do not need heavy tillage – or often any tillage at all – to produce healthy crops. Minimizing tillage can reduce soil erosion across your operation while saving time and money. Read the USDA blog story: Saving Money, Time and Soil: The Economics of No-Till Farming.
https://youtu.be/DBYeb66dN80
October 23, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMaximize Presence of Living RootsLiving roots reduce soil erosion and provide food for organisms like earthworms and microbes that cycle the nutrients you plants need.
- Reduce fallow
- Plant cover crops
- Use diverse crop rotations
October 22, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMaximize BiodiversityIncreasing diversity across your operation can break disease cycles, stimulate plant growth, and provide habitat for pollinators and organisms living in your soil.
- Plant diverse cover crops
- Use diverse crop rotations
- Integrate livestock
October 21, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMaximize Soil CoverAs a general rule, soil should be covered whenever possible. You can plant cover crops as part of both grazing and cropland operations.
To maximize soil cover year round, you can:
- Plant cover crops
- Use organic mulch
- Leave plant residue
October 20, 2020
Principles to Improve Soil HealthMinimize DisturbanceFrom hooves to plows, soil is disturbed in many ways. While some disturbance is unavoidable, minimizing disturbance events across your operation builds healthier soils.
To minimize disturbance of your soil, you can:
- Limit tillage
- Optimize chemical input
- Rotate livestock
October 19, 2020
Keep a Living Root Growing Throughout the YearLiving plants maintain a rhizosphere, an area of concentrated microbial activity close to the root. The rhizosphere is the most active part of the soil ecosystem because it is where the most readily available food is, and where peak nutrient and water cycling occurs. Microbial food is exuded by plant roots to attract and feed microbes that provide nutrients (and other compounds) to the plant at the root-soil interface where the plants can take them up. Since living roots provide the easiest source of food for soil microbes, growing long-season crops or a cover crop following a short-season crop, feeds the foundation species of the soil food web as much as possible during the growing season.
Healthy soil is dependent upon how well the soil food web is fed. Providing plenty of easily accessible food to soil microbes helps them cycle nutrients that plants need to grow. Sugars from living plant roots, recently dead plant roots, crop residues, and soil organic matter all feed the many and varied members of the soil food web.
October 16, 2020
Diversify Soil Biota with Plant DiversityPlants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates that serve as the building blocks for roots, stems, leaves, and seeds. They also interact with specific soil microbes by releasing carbohydrates (sugars) through their roots into the soil to feed the microbes in exchange for nutrients and water. A diversity of plant carbohydrates is required to support the diversity of soil microorganisms in the soil. In order to achieve a high level of diversity, different plants must be grown. The key to improving soil health is ensuring that food and energy chains and webs consist of several types of plants or animals, not just one or two.
Biodiversity is ultimately the key to the success of any agricultural system. Lack of biodiversity severely limits the potential of any cropping system and increases disease and pest problems. A diverse and fully functioning soil food web provides for nutrient, energy, and water cycling that allows a soil to express its full potential. Increasing the diversity of a crop rotation and cover crops increases soil health and soil function, reduces input costs, and increases profitability.
October 15, 2020
Manage More by Disturbing Soil LessSoil disturbance can be the result of physical, chemical or biological activities. Physical soil disturbance, such as tillage, results in bare and/or compacted soil that is destructive and disruptive to soil microbes, and it creates a hostile environment for them to live. Misapplication of farm inputs can disrupt the symbiotic relationships between fungi, other microorganisms, and plant roots. Overgrazing, a form of biological disturbance, reduces root mass, increases runoff, and increases soil temperature. All forms of soil disturbance diminish habitat for soil microbes and result in a diminished soil food web.
October 14, 2020
Soil Health Management
crop residue management improves soil quality
Soil works for you if you work for the soil by using management practices that improve soil health and increase productivity and profitability immediately and into the future. A fully functioning soil produces the maximum amount of products at the least cost. Maximizing soil health is essential to maximizing profitability. Soil will not work for you if you abuse it.
Managing for soil health (improved soil function) is mostly a matter of maintaining suitable habitat for the myriad of creatures that comprise the soil food web. This can be accomplished by disturbing the soil as little as possible, growing as many different species of plants as practical, keeping living plants in the soil as often as possible, and keeping the soil covered all the time
October 13, 2020
Soil Health Assessment
conservationists learn how to assess soil quality
Soil health is an assessment of how well soil performs all of its functions now and how those functions are being preserved for future use. Soil health cannot be determined by measuring only crop yield, water quality, or any other single outcome. Soil health cannot be measured directly, so we evaluate indicators.
- Cropland In-Field Soil Health Assessment Worksheet (4 pages)
- Cropland In-Field Soil Health Assessment Worksheet with Considerations and Indicator Details (11 pages)
- Soil Quality Indicator Sheets
Useful indicators:
- are easy to measure,
- measure changes in soil functions,
- encompass chemical, biological, and physical properties,
- are accessible to many users and applicable to field conditions, and
- are sensitive to variations in climate and management.
Indicator Examples and Relationship to Soil Health
- Soil organic matter => nutrient retention; soil fertility; soil structure; soil stability; and soil erosion
- Physical: bulk density, infiltration, soil structure and macropores, soil depth, and water holding capacity => retention and transport of water and nutrients; habitat for soil microbes; estimate of crop productivity potential; compaction, plow pan, water movement; porosity; and tilth
- Chemical: electrical conductivity, reactive carbon, soil nitrate, soil pH, and extractable phosphorus and potassium => biological and chemical activity thresholds; plant and microbial activity thresholds; and plant available nutrients and potential for N and P loss
- Biological: earthworms, microbial biomass C and N, particulate organic matter, potentially mineralizable N, soil enzymes, soil respiration, and total organic carbon => microbial catalytic potential and repository for C and N; soil productivity and N supplying potential; and microbial activity measure
October 9, 2020
Inherent and Dynamic Properties of SoilSoil has both inherent and dynamic properties, or qualities. Inherent soil quality is a soil’s natural ability to function. For example, sandy soil drains faster than clayey soil. Deep soil has more room for roots than soils with bedrock near the surface. These characteristics do not change easily.
Dynamic soil quality is how soil changes depending on how it is managed. Management choices affect the amount of soil organic matter, soil structure, soil depth, and water and nutrient holding capacity. One goal of soil health research is to learn how to manage soil in a way that improves soil function. Soils respond differently to management depending on the inherent properties of the soil and the surrounding landscape.
Understanding soil health means assessing and managing soil so that it functions optimally now and is not degraded for future use. By monitoring changes in soil health, a land manager can determine if a set of practices is sustainable. See Soil Health Assessment and Soil Health Management principles for soil health for more information.
October 8, 2020
What Soil Does Healthy soil gives us clean air and water, bountiful crops and forests, productive grazing lands, diverse wildlife, and beautiful landscapes. Soil does all this by performing five essential functions:
- Regulating water - Soil helps control where rain, snowmelt, and irrigation water goes. Water and dissolved solutes flow over the land or into and through the soil.
- Sustaining plant and animal life - The diversity and productivity of living things depends on soil.
- Filtering and buffering potential pollutants - The minerals and microbes in soil are responsible for filtering, buffering, degrading, immobilizing, and detoxifying organic and inorganic materials, including industrial and municipal by-products and atmospheric deposits.
- Cycling nutrients - Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and many other nutrients are stored, transformed, and cycled in the soil.
- Physical stability and support - Soil structure provides a medium for plant roots. Soils also provide support for human structures and protection for archeological treasures.
October 7, 2020
Healthy Soil for LifeSoil health, also referred to as soil quality, is defined as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans. This definition speaks to the importance of managing soils so they are sustainable for future generations. To do this, we need to remember that soil contains living organisms that when provided the basic necessities of life - food, shelter, and water - perform functions required to produce food and fiber.
Only "living" things can have health, so viewing soil as a living ecosystem reflects a fundamental shift in the way we care for our nation's soils. Soil isn’t an inert growing medium, but rather is teaming with billions of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that are the foundation of an elegant symbiotic ecosystem. Soil is an ecosystem that can be managed to provide nutrients for plant growth, absorb and hold rainwater for use during dryer periods, filter and buffer potential pollutants from leaving our fields, serve as a firm foundation for agricultural activities, and provide habitat for soil microbes to flourish and diversify to keep the ecosystem running smoothly.
October 5, 2020
Check out this link to understand why soil health is important to farmers!
https://www.morningagclips.com/soil-health-practices-build-soil-and-the-bottom-line/
October 2, 2020
What is Soil Health?
According to Wikipedia, Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment. In more colloquial terms, the health of soil arises from favorable interactions of all soil components (living and non-living) that belong together, as in microbiota, plants and animals. It is possible that a soil can be healthy in terms of eco-system functioning but not necessarily serve crop production or human nutrition directly, hence the scientific debate on terms and measurements. Soil health testing is pursued as an assessment of this status [1] but tends to be confined largely to agronomic objectives, for obvious reasons. Soil health depends on soil biodiversity (with a robust soil biota), and it can be improved via soil management, especially by care to keep protective living covers on the soil and by natural (carbon-containing) soil amendments. Inorganic fertilizers do not necessarily damage soil health if 1) used at appropriate and not excessive rates and 2) if they bring about a general improvement of overall plant growth which contributes more carbon-containing residues to the soil.
October 1, 2020
Diversity in the Soil
It has been observed that a mixture of plants often performs better a monoculture of the best performing plant in the mix, an observation that defies "common sense". The secret to making this work lies in each plant species having unique liquid carbon root exudates which provides a balanced diet of sugar, energy, proteins and nutrients, allowing the microbial population to increase dramatically. Plants surrounded by healthy, abundant microbial communities are more drought tolerant, are better supplied with plant nutrients, and more resistant to disease. In addition, all this microbial activity increases soil organic matter and improves soil structure. ~Soil Health Resource Guide, Sixth Edition, Green Cover Seed
Check out this link to understand why soil health is important to farmers!
https://www.morningagclips.com/soil-health-practices-build-soil-and-the-bottom-line/
October 2, 2020
What is Soil Health?
According to Wikipedia, Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment. In more colloquial terms, the health of soil arises from favorable interactions of all soil components (living and non-living) that belong together, as in microbiota, plants and animals. It is possible that a soil can be healthy in terms of eco-system functioning but not necessarily serve crop production or human nutrition directly, hence the scientific debate on terms and measurements. Soil health testing is pursued as an assessment of this status [1] but tends to be confined largely to agronomic objectives, for obvious reasons. Soil health depends on soil biodiversity (with a robust soil biota), and it can be improved via soil management, especially by care to keep protective living covers on the soil and by natural (carbon-containing) soil amendments. Inorganic fertilizers do not necessarily damage soil health if 1) used at appropriate and not excessive rates and 2) if they bring about a general improvement of overall plant growth which contributes more carbon-containing residues to the soil.
October 1, 2020
Diversity in the Soil
It has been observed that a mixture of plants often performs better a monoculture of the best performing plant in the mix, an observation that defies "common sense". The secret to making this work lies in each plant species having unique liquid carbon root exudates which provides a balanced diet of sugar, energy, proteins and nutrients, allowing the microbial population to increase dramatically. Plants surrounded by healthy, abundant microbial communities are more drought tolerant, are better supplied with plant nutrients, and more resistant to disease. In addition, all this microbial activity increases soil organic matter and improves soil structure. ~Soil Health Resource Guide, Sixth Edition, Green Cover Seed