Soil Amending Simplified

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey you all farmer jesse here today we are going to discuss managing soil fertility because i know for myself at least for many years i found the idea of fertility management what to add to the soil when who to ask all of those things all very daunting but i've tried a lot of stuff over the years and i've spoken with a lot of people and i've read a lot of research papers and consumed a lot of beer and have ultimately come to some reasonable conclusions about how to manage one's soil health and it may not be what you think so we'll talk about some essential things to do for soil health and at the end i will give you my general approach to managing soil on our farm so let's do it yeah i do think the beer was essential is that not science [Music] first things first if you're not subscribed to this channel make sure to hit the subscribe button and if you are subscribed you can probably finish this sentence and if you gain something from this video or any of our videos you can always support our work at patreon.com no-till growers where the idea for this specific video came from or you can always snag a copy of the living soil handbook from notegrowers.com where the proceeds go to making you more content like this now i'm hardly the last word in fertility and soil management i am not a trained agronomist nor soil ecologist i am just a nerdy grower who likes to dig into research and i've tried a ton of things on our farm but who has also notably only ever farmed in kentucky on kentucky soils so in that way i suggest you add any insights you've learned from your own regions and contexts and experience and education to this conversation in the comments section as we go along i'm going to lightly touch on things like knf korean natural farming jadam and those sorts of practices i will also briefly discuss nutrient balancing and etc but what i really want to focus on with this video is the four or five things that if you don't do them nothing else you add to your soil will have that much effect at all the thing that does not get talked about enough with amending soil is that we often see deficiencies in our plants or diseases or pests not because a nutrient is lacking in the soil per se not necessarily it can be but because the soil is physically not in a good enough place to offer said nutrient to the plant no amount of say biodynamic preparations will save poorly draining soils for instance you can balance your soils all day long with the perfect collection of rock minerals but without good moisture you've just got expensive dust the flip side of it is if you do these few things i'm about to discuss for your soil you may find you really don't need to amend much at all saving you time and money and confusion yeah the first thing that you really need to address to make any amendment that you plan to add to your soil effective is soil compaction soil compaction essentially the smashing together of soil particles can greatly reduce root penetration it can cause anaerobic pockets that produce gases toxic to plant roots it can be favorable to pathogenic microbes um it can attract kitty cats come here yeah compaction can hinder gas exchange so plants and microbes alike cannot breathe and that's just a small sampling of how compaction can make things difficult on your production chances are if you have dense soil at all i.e a higher percentage of clay especially if it has ever been plowed or tilled uh been driven on had large concentrations of animals uh but even if it's only ever been a tightly mowed yard you likely have compacted soils but let's not guess if it's compacted because it's relatively easy to figure out determining soil compaction can be done with this expensive tool here called a penetrometer but i want to be clear that i believe you can get equally reliable results using a four foot piece of rebar and i'm serious pushing a penetrometer in the soil tells me very little that pushing a piece of rebar into the soil doesn't except that the penetrometer is perhaps a little more exact and it's very expensive so don't buy one see if your extension agents will lend you one or just use the rebar either way to test compaction push one of these two instruments into the soil that you intend to plant when the soil is not fully saturated like you don't want to necessarily do this right after a rainfall but also you don't want to test when the soil is fully dry either reasonably moist soil will give you the best idea of your compaction push the tool into the soil and when it stops that's where your compaction zone is or your hard pan um it could be just below the surface or several inches down on our scale we can address this sort of compaction by broad forking basically this is a tool with several tines it's very large and heavy and you shove it into the ground and pull it back and just lightly pop the soil you do that for a couple years and the compaction generally goes away as long as you're doing it in conjunction with everything else we're about to discuss it is sufficient for breaking through compaction this video is just like 10 minutes of me broad forking uh sorry on larger scales that the version of this tool is a sub-soiler maybe just not when the soil is too wet or too dry working the soil too wet is an especially great way to cause further compaction a simple test is that the soil should lightly crumble in your fingers if it slicks at all it's too wet i know there is a lot of buzz about decompacting soil with biology with cover crops i'm not going to say those don't work because they certainly can over time absolutely but they need help so instead i'm going to recommend you use things like compost slurries and cover crops in conjunction with physical decompaction such as broad forking that greatly speeds up the process and makes the effort of adding a biological amendment like a good inoculating compost or going through the trouble of growing a good cover crop more effective and plant roots which can help open up the soil and keep it apart they'll do that when they have those holes from the decompaction to get into that is a nice segway okay it's a forced segway into talking about the second thing you must do to make your amendments effective photosynthesize well not you exactly you can't really do that except in the creation of vitamin d where humans and other animals literally use sunlight to create vitamin d from a type of cholesterol in your body that we then use to metabolize calcium because when we evolved from being seed dwelling creatures to land dwelling calcium was much harder to find so we animals develop vitamin d from sunlight so i guess you do sort of photosynthesize man that's cool but that's not going to help you with making your amendments more effective in your soil for that you need plants you need a diversity of plants it doesn't have to be living pathways and in planting like it is on our farm just a good rotation of multiple crop families you need some amount of plants to be in your soil year round where possible and you need to leave the roots in the ground if at all possible after the crop is terminated so that the microbes can feed on it what are plants doing that is so important to making amendments available uh well plants provide the energy to the system by converting sunlight water and carbon dioxide along with various nutrients process we call photosynthesis into glucose which is just a carbohydrate or a little molecular bundle of energy but that's a lot of jargon think of what plants create through photosynthesis like sweet little biscuits that they send out through their roots in exchange for nutrients from microbes microbes consume those biscuits because well they're delicious and that gives the microbes the energy they need to live but also to engage in decomposing amendments for plants we know how this works right microbes spit an enzyme onto a rock mineral or some organic matter or a flake of alfalfa meal or whatever it is it's kind of like spitting and that rock mineral is like gross you can have it and releases a bit of the nutrient from that rock mineral the microbe then absorbs that nutrient so when the microbe dies said nutrient be it phosphorus or molybdenum or whatever it is is released into the soil in a plant available form a form the plant can utilize this isn't the only way plants get nutrients but all ways require photosynthesis and so if you are using non-synthetic amendments like rock powders but even things like blood meal or composted chicken manure or what have you you need a lot of energy in the system and a lot of microbes in the system the system just being the soil to convert those ingredients into something plants can use cover crops are one option for increasing that energy and you should watch this playlist here for some guidance on that but also just growing anything even cash crops hell even weeds is better than nothing though i of course don't intentionally grow weeds if you can help it but the point simply being that plants feed the soil and like i will say a million times in my life if the soil is not being fed it's feeding on itself if the soil is not being fed it's feeding on itself [Music] [Applause] this is probably not going to come as a much of a surprise to you but you kind of need water you personally need it plants need it every organism on earth needs it it's a requisite for life for photosynthesis microbes need water to move around and give them the enzymatic spit that they require but also if you want to get a nutrient that you've added to the soil inside of your plant you will need a reasonable amount of moisture to transport it that does not mean you can't dry farm or that you have to have perfect irrigation it just means that you need to do everything possible to ensure that the plants have access to water through the soil mulches help in many cases and i fully break down the different mulch options in the living soil handbook but also adding things like compost and growing plants helps the soil to build water holding capacity through the buildup of soil organic matter soil organic matter is incredible it not only holds significant amounts of water but significant amounts of nutrients your plants require as well generally speaking the closer your soil organic matter percentages to that i don't know arbitrary sort of eight to ten percent mark depending on your soil type the less you need of other amendments however more important than just saying build soil organic matter is to say make sure your soil is set up to build and retain soil organic matter and one of the key elements of that is indeed water management i know a lot of agronomists will say that the type of water you use will have an effect and i would listen to them but in a pinch just about any water is better than no water you do not want to lose the microbial populations you've built by allowing the soil to dry out again there are going to be regional considerations for all of this so consulting with a local agronomist on your water is really critically important it's as important as consulting with them on your soil because there may be salt issues or hard water or nitrates or whatever unique to you situation it may be there is such a thing as too much water that's why you know that's why testing your drainage is essential to do so simply dig a hole about 12 inches deep and about 8 to 10 inches wide at a slightly drier time of the growing season fill that hole with water and allow the water to drain once the water has drained fill it again and see how long it takes for the water to leave again the longer it takes the worse your drainage is and if it's still full or quite full after a day you will need to address the drainage it may be simply a matter of addressing your compaction to increase your drainage or a more complicated matter of putting in drainage tile or picking a different garden spot [Music] [Applause] so much i could say on water but this video is already going long so now as promised here is how i address soil amending um i do look at soil tests but mostly i leave the chemical nature of the soil alone i'm not sold on the idea of soil balancing and the base cation saturation ratio methods also referred to as the albrecht method of soil balancing but i do test the soils with labs who employ that methodology i don't think the soil balancing approach that is adding rock minerals and specific ratios based on a specific type of soil test i don't think that is a bad approach per se the research just doesn't fully suggest to me that it's entirely necessary i've read solomon and others and they make really compelling arguments i'm just not quite there yet personally and there may be regions where it makes more sense than others feel free to disagree i think the research is still developing especially around how soil balancing relates to nutrient density and there are some good folks who do well with base cation saturation ratio logan labs is one that does this sort of testing and they're my go-to testing laboratory i like them a lot though i personally have been getting more into the haney test from ward labs as well because this is a much more biologically driven soil test that measures what nutrients are available microbes as well as the soil respiration rates and soil respiration is just important that's how much co2 your soil is giving off and the more co2 it's giving off the more microbes are letting out the more co2 your plants have access to to put back into the system and turn into roots and leaves and fruit and microbes and eventually you anyway soil testing is a whole other monster to tackle maybe at some other time but for me i look at the test and look for grave deficiencies and excesses in the soil only when there is something truly missing will i consider adding it and i do try to cut down on adding to the excessive nutrients like phosphorus whenever i add something it's hard to avoid entirely because we use so much compost but good to be conscious of it for nitrogen i do prefer fertilizing composts like those derived from organic chicken manure or apply liquid fish emulsion sometimes to get the nitrogen cycle started in my soil i apply them before heavy feeders or lightly around dense plantings of things like radishes we use things like fish emulsions a lot in the tunnel around the tomatoes and cucumbers but with compost it's usually just once per year in the growing bed with the fish emulsions it's usually once per week depending on the growth of the plant and how it looks and that will come down over time our nitrogen usage honestly you should not have to do this nitrogen addition forever or at least not that much maybe with the intensive crops like tomatoes and cucumbers and those sorts of things but less so with your field crops you will hopefully through although all soils are different be able to use less and less nitrogen amendments because as your soil microbial biomass rebounds and a static level of organic matter is achieved which means that your nitrogen needs can start to come from more from the soil and from air than an amendment because it's essentially already there in the soil uh of course leguminous cover crops are also a great nitrogen source uh and source of organic matter when grown well and with the rhizobium inoculant one of the few microbial inoculants i believe is helpful don't dwell on that comment too much i'm not opposed to lab-grown microbes per se i haven't tried them all either i just believe the local microbiology is going to outlive and outperform most lab-grown biology and i don't want to have to buy my biology every year i want the soil and the plants to sustain it for me plus i'm a compost making nerd so for biology i prefer well-made inoculating composts and worm castings which i like adding to the soil mix to stimulate biology at the roots before the crop goes is even in the ground and i do use some biostimulants like humic acid and kelp just adding a bit whenever i'm applying compost or compost slurry biostimulants and teas and is such a big conversation that's a whole other video but there's a lot out there on how to do those so i recommend graham state's work on the nutrition farming podcast for good for really good guidance on biostimulants and those sorts of things for intensive crops like i mentioned the greenhouse tomatoes i will wear needed employ a foliar spray as well to keep up with deficiencies i like foliar sprays and plants can very rapidly utilize them there are several sites online that will give you indications of leaf deficiencies and then you can purchase foliar amendments for those deficiencies i don't have a favorite site for this or for the amendments in fact always check two or three sites just to make sure you've got the right deficiency identified preferably those with a dot edu address so you can at least assume a horticulturalist wrote it john kempf at the regenerative agriculture podcast and advancing ecoagriculture has put a lot of great info out on foliar sprays and soil health worth reading or listening to so check that out you can also do a sap analysis which is a big proponent of which is just sampling the tissue of your plant and seeing what nutrients are available to the plant in that moment and what it may be lacking that will give you more precise information and then consult with an agronomist on how to address that on sprays those can get expensive those tests but so can over applying amendments or applying the wrong ones less is almost always more by mistake i have over applied amendments such as lactic acid bacteria made in the korean natural farming method called lab in the past and literally been burned great amendment but it has to be used correctly like all amendments so be careful and do your research in fact that last point is really important because if this sort of stuff still sounds daunting that's because it is it's a lot of work and research to understand plant nutrition and how to address soil health and moreover the science is still very much evolving we understand strikingly little about plant nutrition and microbial interactions but we know that water compaction management compost and living roots lead to better and better soil health indeed addressing those will solve most soil issues and they are concepts that are much easier to wrap one's mind around then you can fine-tune your issues through amending and foliar feeding as necessary because addressing the issues i highlighted here will make whatever you do add to your soil more effective okay so that's the foundation i wanted to do a little what to add when video but the reality is that there are just too many variables and this approach to me is way more helpful but maybe more amendment videos in the future if you all enjoyed it and feel free to add your insights as always in the comments section there is an infinite amount to say on this subject in fact i don't know if you could add a fifth essential soil management practice what would yours be because i know i could think of several others worth adding but i'll leave that to you because i've been talking forever this feels like a video that is very long and could be like 10 hours longer otherwise like this video if you liked this video make sure you are subscribed to the channel if you have not already subscribed also if you've not already please pick up a copy of the living soil handbook from notillgrowers.com specifically to support our work thanks for watching we'll see you later bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: No-Till Growers

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Id: SxJoOh4a0wM

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2022