Practical Tips: practices that improve soil health

Suggestions brought to you by: my training & lived experiences!

Today, I want to share some of my best practical advice for moving the needle on soil health. Though I’m tailoring this advice to a small farmer / homesteader, almost all of these concepts can be adapted to various scales, contexts, and vegetation.

These suggestions are brought to you by: my brain 🧠

Next time, I will share some that come from my heart, because we are complex beings with complex behavior that emerges from both logic and feelings. 🌟

1. Focus on increasing organic matter

When it comes to restoring soil health, there is a dilemma: most disturbed soils don’t have enough organic matter to support a functional soil food web, and yet soil organisms themselves are responsible for the formation of organic matter and soil structure.

We can address this catch-22 by facilitating the incorporation of organic matter into the soil while also introducing beneficial biology.

Considerations for increasing OM%

many studies indicate a minimum of ~3-5% OM is needed for a functional soil food web

Livestock

When managed holistically, through intentional mob grazing / predator mimicry techniques, livestock introduce OM into the soil through manure and by way of their herding.

Vegetation

Continuous photosynthesis of a diverse groundcover provides a consistent carbon pathway that generates the production of root exudates and stimulates plant-microbe interactions. 

Please know, in instances where herbicides are being used to maintain one type of vegetation (from lawns to monocrop fields), the carbon pathway and plant-microbe interactions are compromised.

GOM

Remember the “ground-up organic matter” from industrial “compost” producers? GOM can be a useful source of organic matter for soils with low OM%, but to use it mindfully we want to…

1. Have a sample of the industrial-made compost evaluated by someone with a microscope practice 

   1. Rationale: this is mostly to ensure that the material isn’t full of harmful microbes that could kill your plants - it happens all the time!

2. Then, if it’s confirmed to be aerobic, spray it with a BioComplete* extract 👏

   1. Rationale: more on this below, but this is to increase the biodiversity living among that GOM

If you can’t or don’t want to evaluate a sample of the GOM, it’s best to just avoid these producers altogether (even if they brand themselves as natural, organic, biological, etc.) and stick to other methods shared here.

2. Find or make an excellent source of compost

Listen, if you’re growing vegetables or restoring soil without livestock, making or sourcing compost is part of the job! And being diligent with it will make other parts of the farm job/lawn care/landscape maintenance easier.

The two DIY methods I recommend most are Vermicomposting and Johnson-Su Bioreactors. 

Turns out a well managed pile of leaves and woodchips yields a soil amendment capable of restoring health and functionality!

Why?

Because these are some of the most low-maintenance composting methods, and when done well (namely with consideration for fungal foods and maintaining ideal moisture content) they’ll yield an excellent, biodiverse microbiome.

On the other hand, sourcing a BioComplete* Compost can be challenging, but it’s getting easier to find all the time. I recommend looking for a smaller compost-maker that can hold a discussion with you about the rationale behind their methods, have a sample of it assessed with a microscope if you can, but if not ask good questions and follow your intuition.

And remember, you’re better off paying top dollar for an excellent BioComplete* Compost and using a much smaller amount than you are using a high volume of affordable GOM (ground-up organic matter) from industrial producers with no additional inoculant.

*Biocomplete Compost is a standard and term trademarked by Dr. Elaine Ingham and the Soil Food Web School to differentiate "GOM" or 'ground-up organic matter' from a compost/soil amendment that has diverse biological activity.

3. Liquid Applications over Topdressing (in many cases)

By diluting a solid compost into a liquid application we’re able to treat a MUCH larger area than if we applied the solid compost as a topdressing. That’s not to say that topdressing is bad - if you can afford to do it with a BioComplete Compost, go for it, but be sure to add a mulch layer on top (more on that below).

The efficacy of liquid application is great news! Applying compost as a diluted liquid means I can add treatments throughout the year from a single compost source, rather than dumping the whole thing at once and losing a lot of the life in it due to drying, run-off, etc. 

One exception to this is in scenarios where soil crusts have formed. As you can imagine, a liquid application tends to sit on top of a soil crust and not soak in. Ask yourself - how can we introduce biology into such a soil? 

In some extreme cases an initial plowing event may be necessary to break the compaction layer to open it up for a liquid application. In other cases, after a few seasons of livestock grazing, mulching, topdressing and/or covercropping the soil structure may improve enough to be less hydrophobic and become more receptive to liquid applications.

4. Make Extracts over Teas

Unless you have a microscope practice, I highly recommend sticking to making extracts over teas. 

Why? 

Well, an extract is super simple - we’re just trying to knock the microbes off the surfaces of a solid compost and into water so we can apply them right away as a soil drench. Anyone can make extracts with a 5 gallon bucket - I’d love to see this become common practice among lawn care!

On the other hand, teas are basically extracts that receive microbial foods (like kelp, fish hydrolysate, etc.) and allowed time to “brew” aerobically to encourage microbes to reproduce. However, without a microscope you can’t know what microbes you’re increasing, whether or not the tea is oxygenated enough, etc. 

Of the teas I’ve evaluated for folks (including many of my own failed teas!), they’re almost always brewing more bacteria and little else, and that’s not very helpful to soil health.

So, don’t over complicate it, stick to simple extracts.

5. Mulch - it’s a verb!

I’m learning that many folks seek a mulch material that doesn’t break down so they don’t have to replace it as often - this was surprising and confusing to me at first, but if I set my soil health advocacy aside, I totally get where people are coming from.

While a stalwart mulch is technically protecting the soil surface from sun, rain, and wind it’s a missed opportunity to feed the soil. We want mulch to be breaking down! 

Consider how a landscape, ranging from a meadow to a forest, naturally mulches itself. From living ground cover to decomposing tree limbs and leaves, it’s constantly mulching itself - let these be your sources of inspiration for mulch. Save those rocks for walking paths and consider breaking up (or at least setting boundaries) with weed cloth!

6. Water: rainwater & humic acid treatments

Municipal water and well water can both be harsh for use as irrigation on soil or composts. You already know this, but if you haven’t, go on and test your water quality to be informed on how it may impact your soil. 

Additionally, consider where you might be able to capture rainwater for use in your gardens, compost, etc. and consider adding a humic acid treatment to any hose watering or irrigation water.

Humic acid is naturally created in healthy soil systems; it has a complex molecular structure which allows it to bind to many different chemicals. Humic acid products are commonly used in biological farming to treat chloramine in municipal water supplies. Chloramine is in the water supply to suppress microbial activity, though this is a necessary treatment to protect community health, it’s an undesirable component when watering our biologically active plants, soil, and composts. 

Chloramine will not gas off like chlorine does, but it only takes a small amount of humic acid to fix chloramine. The rule of thumb is to use just enough to turn the water only slightly brown/tan. This is commonly done using a hose-end sprayer for any watering done by hose, but can also be done for irrigation systems with an in-line treatment (like an in-line fertigation unit) near the spigot, before the water branches out to various fields. 

The trickiest part about this is finding a humic acid product that was sourced responsibly (comment if you’ve found a brand you trust!) 

The north star is to make your own liquid humates by pouring purified or spring water through a sample of mature compost and collecting the humic-rich leachate.

Concluding Thoughts

In summary, these guideposts point us back to the principles of soil conservation and provide us tangible ways to honor the fact that soil life is the main driver of improved structure and fertility.

But what do we do when we inevitably face challenges? How do we stay motivated, focused and progressing? How do we recover from mistakes? More on this, next time.

With love,

Andie 🤎🪱