App features

Using Soilmentor to collect evidence for SFI
Using Soilmentor to collect evidence for SFI 1200 1600 Soilmentor

Using Soilmentor to collect evidence for SFI

SFI Actions

If you are farming in the UK, and you have entered land into a Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) agreement this year, or you are planning to, Soilmentor can be used to support you to gather and categorise your evidence. We have worked through the three actions on soils from the 2023 guide – SAM1, SAM2 & SAM3 – to demonstrate how monitoring on Soilmentor can support with these aims.

We have also collaborated with moorland farming advisors to put together an optional category to collect evidence for the MOR1 action. This category is not part of the standard Soilmentor template, so get in touch with us at info@vidacycle.com if your farm qualifies for MOR1 and would like us to add these additional tests to your account.

To learn more about how to use Soilmentor to collect evidence for these actions, click the button below to read our guide.

Read the Soilmentor & SFI Guide

Field Report

The Soilmentor Field Report feature can be used to generate a pdf report of activities you’ve recorded – so you can select the relevant fields that you want to gather evidence for, choose the soil health results that you want to see, and create a report to share as evidence.

Screenshot from the Field Report, showing results from ‘Mud Mead’ field

If you are interested in using Soilmentor to gather evidence for you SFI agreements you can view our subscription options here, or get in touch with us at info@vidacycle.com if you have any questions at all – we’re always happy to chat 🙂

Please note that you will need a Regen or Regen+ subscription to have access to Regen Platform benchmarking.

The Soilmentor Regen Platform is here!
The Soilmentor Regen Platform is here! 2665 1961 Soilmentor

🌱 The Soilmentor Regen Platform is live 🌱

The Soilmentor Regen Platform is here! We’re so excited to be launching this addition to Soilmentor, created in collaboration with Nicole Masters and the brilliant team at Integrity Soils.

The Soilmentor Regen Platform gives you access to clear benchmarking of the Regen Indicators – 10 soil metrics compiled with Nicole, which represent key aspects of soil health. Your results for each of these Regen Indicators will appear as a traffic light in the Regen Platform – either red (critical measure), amber (early warning alert), or green (great result).

From the regen scorecard you can quickly identify potential problem areas and click into the relevant Regen Indicators to explore them further. Every result you log in the Soilmentor Regen Platform comes with regenerative pointers from Nicole, providing explanations for each result, and things to consider for your future management. These considerations are bespoke to your field’s soil type, rainfall level and biome (learn more about these classifiers here). 

We are proud to include leading organisations such as Yeo Valley and their supplier network, and EIT’s Regenerative Agriculture Transition Program in Southern Europe as early adopters of the Soilmentor Regen Platform. We created this toolkit with Nicole to empower farmers to monitor and build on a variety of soil metrics that reflect the importance of taking a diverse & holistic approach to soil and farm management. We’re excited to support farmers and organisations to learn from Nicole’s insights and knowledge in the Regen Platform.

Working with Nicole on the Regen Platform was the perfect fit – her insights are deeply rooted in the importance of observation, supporting mindset shifts, and building diversity and microbiome health in soils. We couldn’t be more excited to support this approach. Nicole’s book ‘For the Love of Soil’ is a firm favourite of ours, and we can also highly recommend her online course as an excellent companion to the outcomes-based learning supported by the Soilmentor Regen Platform!

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Why some of our protocols are changing
Why some of our protocols are changing 792 498 Soilmentor

Why we’re changing some of our protocols

We’re making some small changes to some of our scoring and protocols alongside the launch of the Regen Platform. Each of these changes have been made alongside Nicole Masters and the team at Integrity Soils, to ensure collecting soil health data on your farm feels clear and repeatable over time. We’ve detailed each of these changes below for your reference.

The Slake Test

Previously, our slake test protocol had a scoring of 8 options, with a method involving moving a sieve to disturb soil and evaluate its resilience across several steps.

We’ve decided to simplify this scoring, so you now rate your soil lumps as one of five options, after five minutes submerged underwater. We think this method will make your results easier to repeat over time, and will make the test easier to carry out. See the new scoring explained further here.

If you have recorded your soil previously from 1-8 in the slake test, your historical results will be moved into the new 5 option scoring, and your old 1-8 score will be kept as a note in Soilmentor, so you can still refer back to it. You’ll be able to see how your soil results score on the Regen Platform right away in the new scoring.

Basal Ground Cover Transect (% Bare Earth)

We’re changing the way we think about ground cover, from previous ‘% Bare Earth’ monitoring using a quadrat to estimate the proportion of foliar cover, to basal cover, which examines the total area of the earth covered by plants extending into the soil, rather than only covered by leaves or foliage (see image below).

Our new ‘Basal ground cover transect’ metric in Soilmentor will feed into the Regen Platform as one of our Regen Indicators. This new ground cover testing protocol involves moving away from a sample site in a transect line, sticking a fence post or stick into the ground as you go, and recording what the base of your post touches as it goes into the soil (read more on this method here). Basal cover is a more reliable measure year to year, and is a better indication of your soil’s resilience to erosion than foliar cover.

If you’ve already recorded ‘% Bare Earth’ in Soilmentor with a quadrat, we’ll display your previous percentage cover scores in the Regen Platform for your reference in the meantime, and we encourage you to update them with a basal ground cover transect when you get the time!

Image from University of Idaho page explaining different types of cover – read more here.

Infiltration Rate

We’ve pulled out the infiltration rate test into two different tests to record in the Soilmentor app, called ‘Infiltration rate – 1st inch‘, and ‘Infiltration rate – 2nd inch‘.

This is a small change we’ve made to ensure that the Regen Platform can benchmark your results accurately. The ‘2nd inch’ infiltration rate is one of our Regen Indicators, as research shows that a second infiltration rate done immediately after the first is a much more accurate representation of your soil’s infiltration. The Regen Platform will only display a result from this second infiltration rate activity recorded in the app.

If you don’t intend on using the Regen Platform, you can continue doing your infiltration rates normally – your historical data will all be saved in the ‘1st inch’ test.

The Brix Barometer

We’ve split out brix testing in Soilmentor into ‘Brix of grass or crops’ and ‘Brix of weeds’, to allow for the calculation of one of our new Regen Indicators – the ‘Brix Barometer’. This new combined metric looks at the difference between brix readings of a weed or undesirable plant, and brix readings of your grass in a pasture, or your crop. 

Brix measures the light refracting through dissolved sugars with a refractometer, showing the nutrient density levels of a plant, based on the presence of a diversity of simple and complex sugars. If the brix of the weeds on your farm is higher than the brix of your grasses or crops, this indicates that your soil is a better environment for weeds than for crops – probably due to compaction or a microbial imbalance. If the brix of your crops is higher than the brix of weeds, you likely don’t need to take any action to manage ‘weed’ species. 

Nodulation of Legumes

We’ve split out the scoring of the ‘Nodulation of legumes’ test into more categories. Our new scoring allows for more precise results, and will feed into the Regen Platform as one of our Regen Indicators. Historic data will be moved into the new scoring in Soilmentor. 

Read our new scoring for legume nodulation here. 

Rooting depth (80%)

We’ve added a new rooting depth test, ‘Rooting depth (80%)’, which measures the depth at which the majority (approximately 80%) of plant roots are penetrating, and is one of our Regen Indicators. 

This new test takes into account that there may be a few ‘outlier’ roots which have managed to grow deeper, but do not necessarily indicate the soil’s condition for root growth. Conditions which limit root growth include compaction, changes in salinity / pH, low oxygen levels, or nutrient deficiencies.

Historical rooting depths will remain in the ‘Rooting depth (Total)’ test in Soilmentor, so if you want to analyse your rooting depths on the Regen Platform, you’ll need to go out and record some new 80% rooting depths, by following these instructions. 

The Regen Platform will be launching in January 2022. For the full list of Regen Indicators, head to our soil test page here. If you’re already a Soilmentor customer, you will be able to upgrade your subscription to access the Regen Platform once we launch.  Stay tuned for more info!

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Introducing the biodiversity tool!
Introducing the biodiversity tool! 2560 1707 Soilmentor

With the launch of Soilmentor comes the biodiversity tool – helping you to farm in tune with nature!

We’re so excited to be launching the new biodiversity monitoring tool on Soilmentor, which will help you to record the range of different species present on your farm. Our vision of a resilient farm of the future is one with thriving biodiversity – so this tool is at the core of the Vidacycle values of promoting beauty, ecology, and profitability on farms. 

The tool is designed to let you record a wildlife sighting from a list of UK farmland species – you can choose from lists of birds, mammals, butterflies & moths and other invertebrates. Once you’ve spotted some wildlife, you can view your farm’s biodiversity from the comfort of your home or office. The tool will allow you to view sightings over time, differences between fields, and see which species you spot the most and least often.

You may notice the app doesn’t have a built in ‘count’ setting. This is because the tool is focused on displaying the range of different species you can find, rather than the abundances of a few species. A larger diversity of animals on your farm is more indicative of wildlife-friendly management, as it means you’re creating a multitude of habitats for each species. If you have a certain list of species in mind that you want to be able to monitor on Soilmentor, that are missing from our list, you can create a bespoke species list for this purpose with a Soilmentor+ subscription! Let us know if you’re interested in this.

 

The list of birds in the app includes all 19 birds on the RSPB Farmland Bird Indicator (FBI) – birds that are dependent on farmland and unable to thrive elsewhere, many of which have red list conservation status in the UK. If you spot red listed birds, we’ll let you know you when you log in to the web app to view your biodiversity trends!

When monitoring biodiversity on your farm, you begin to notice patterns of diversity on different fields, and learn how best to create an environment that attracts wildlife. Taking the time to stop and notice the wildlife can become a beneficial part of your farming routine, and we’ve found it really helps us to farm more in tune with nature, which is a key part of farming more regeneratively. We’d love to hear how you get on with your biodiversity recording – and what you’ve managed to spot on your farm! Keep us in the loop with a mention on Twitter or Instagram 🙂

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Use maps to save your sample locations
Use maps to save your sample locations 4032 3024 Soilmentor

Mapping field boundaries & soil samples with GPS

The Soilmentor app includes a handy map, so you can save your soil sample locations & field boundaries, and easily return year after year to the same spots to accurately monitor changes in soil health. 

As all farmers know, there can be huge amounts of variability even within a single field, so the idea of finding an ‘average’ soil health for the field is difficult, and requires you to test at many sample sites.

So, our advice is to just pick 1 or 2 sample sites in a field, and monitor how things change at each site as you change your management practices. To do this you need to go back to more or less the same spot, which is where being able to mark your sample sites on the map makes things easier!

You are also able to upload your field boundaries to Soilmentor, so you can easily navigate from field to sample site, by clicking directly on the phone app map.

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Returning to the same sample sites when monitoring information on your soils is important. It saves lots of time, as you can sample fewer locations in the field but still have a good idea of how your management is affecting soil health. By going back to the same location, you reduce most of the variables, so you can be pretty certain that any changes in what you see and record are due to a change in management. 

So, now you’ll really know if that cover crop helped improve your rooting depth and VESS score or not! With GPS you can locate your samples sites more accurately, view them on a map, and ensure you return to the same spot each time.

Got any questions about GPS and using Soilmentor to monitor soil health? Contact us!

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Soil Test Challenge
Soil Test Challenge 559 397 Soilmentor

Try something new this year, start monitoring your soil health. Do you accept the Soil Test Challenge?

We challenge you to do 3 easy soil tests on your fields. It takes one day in total and will give you valuable insight into how healthy your soil is and how well it will support healthy plants and livestock.

Knowing your soil is the key to successful farming, so take the time to do these simple tests and improve your understanding of your soil health. It will help you to develop the right approach to manage it.

Soilmentor makes physical soil analysis easy and informative. It works with a handy smartphone app to record soil test results & photos in the field and an online account to review & analyse a range of soil health indicators.

 

How to participate in the Soil Test Challenge:

Before you start:

  1. Pick 3 fields to test, repeat the tests 3 times in different locations on each field.
  2. On the day you do your tests, take a note of the weather over the last 24 hours because the temperature and amount of rainfall will affect the outcome of the tests.
  3. Take photos of each place that you test and record the results of each test (do this easily with Soilmentor). This helps you to monitor change over time and is important if you want to get advice further down the line.

 

TEST 1 – Earthworm Count

Earthworms are a key indicator that your soil is alive and has good soil organic matter content. They move nutrients around the soil profile, playing a vital role in feeding your plants, and open up the soil structure allowing water and air into the soil. Their sticky mucus also helps to build good soil structure.

Equipment: spade and tray or plastic bag

Method: Dig a 20 x 20 x 20 cm hole with your spade. Place the dug up soil on the tray/ plastic bag. Using the app, take a photo of the soil profile then gently break it apart with your hands. Count the number of worms and record it using the Soilmentor app. Take a photo in the app too!

In the UK, an average of 15-20 worms in a 20 x 20 x 20 cm soil pit is considered good, but it will also depend on the time of year and your soil type, and any recent field management. Using Soilmentor makes it easy to look back and compare when you do the count again next year.

 

TEST 2 – Slake Test

How well your soil structure holds together in water shows you how it withstands heavy rainfall, and what its capacity for storing water and nutrients is like. Good soil structure is an indicator that you have adequate soil organic matter that supports the life in your soil.

Equipment: spade, sieve with small mesh (>2mm), bowl of cold water, stop watch, plastic bags x9 (can be old shopping bags), pen and paper for labelling soil samples

Method: Take some of the soil from the sample dug up for the earthworm count or dig up a new sample. Select 3 pieces (aggregates) which are roughly 1 cm in diameter. Put them in a plastic bag, write the name of the field on the paper, tear it off and put it in the bag. Take care not to squash the soil. Repeat this process for all the soil samples you take. Take all bags of soil home and take the soil out and allow it to air dry overnight in a warm place being careful not to mix up the different samples. The next day, for each sample, arrange the soil aggregates in the sieve and fully immerse in water up the lip of the sieve. Observe the aggregates under water for 1 minute and lift them out then score them using the scale on this webpage. If they score 0-2 the test is over and you can record the score in the Soilmentor app. If they score higher than 2, move onto the second part of the test: gently raise the sieve up and down five times, so that the surface of the water just touches the top of the aggregate. Score using the scale and record in the Soilmentor app. We only give a soil a score of 8 if the water is crystal clear (i.e. the aggregate has not broken down at all) after the test. Take photos of each slake test using the Soilmentor app.

Well-structured soil is composed of rounded aggregates which will not break down easily in water. This means soil will retain its structure after heavy rainfall, and allow water and nutrients to move between the aggregates into deeper layers of the soil for your crops to use later.

Aggregates that often have sharp edges and that break down easily in water may suggest that they are only held together because of compaction. As soon as there is a heavy rainfall the soil structure falls apart and blocks the soil surface increasing the likelihood of surface run-off and erosion.

 

TEST 3 – Infiltration rate

Infiltration rates clearly show how ready your soil is to soak up water. If the soil structure is open with plenty of air spaces the water will easily move down into the soil profile until the air spaces are full with water. Nutrients also move with water into the soil profile.

Equipment: 150 mm x 150 mm metal/plastic tubes with 85 mm depth marked (find out how to make this), water bottle with 450 ml marked on it, water (4L or so per field), stopwatch (on phone), mallet (for driving tube into soil) & wood block (to protect the top of the pipe from damage when hammering in)

Method: Clear plant growth from the soil surface by trimming back. If sward is very thick try cutting through with a knife to help get the tube through. Insert tube into the ground to a depth of 85 mm. Use the app to take a photo of the location showing the tube and groundcover. Fill your pre-marked water bottle with exactly 450 ml of water. Pour water steadily into the top of the pipe and start stopwatch. Stop timing when all the water has disappeared but the ground is still glistening and record the time in the app. Measure out another 450 ml of water in the bottle and repeat the remaining steps, recording the time in the Soilmentor app.

Infiltration rates for each field help you to understand how easily water and nutrients can move into your soil. Very slow rates may indicate waterlogging, soil sealing and compaction, whilst very rapid rates may reveal an increased risk of nutrient leaching.

Recording soil test results

Make soil monitoring easy by using Soilmentor; record soil test results at the touch of a button and upload the data in seconds for analysis on your online account via an internet browser on your phone, tablet or laptop.

We want to see your soil test photos from the #SoilTestChallenge! Either tweet them to us mentioning #SoilTestChallenge @soilmentor, or send us an email to info@vidacycle.com.

 

 

To get the most out of soil monitoring repeat soil tests twice a year and more, around April and October when the weather should be warm and the soil is moist. Different farm management practises will influence the results of these tests, so if you’re trying anything from conventional arable to cover crops to mob grazing, it is essential to monitor your soil.

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Chris Leach – Waddesdon Estate Farm
Chris Leach – Waddesdon Estate Farm 4032 3024 Soilmentor

Chris Leach is part of the Forestry Team at Waddesdon Estate in Buckinghamshire. Around 500 tonnes of wood is produced from managing the 450 acres of the estate’s woodland, half of which is used as fuel for the biomass boiler. Chris was keen to find an environmentally sound way to use the waste wood and saw the perfect opportunity to work with the Estate’s farming operation to combine the waste wood and farm waste to create compost. He will add bokashi to the compost which he hopes will encourage mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial bacteria in the soil. Chris is now working with all departments on the Estate, (Gardens, Stud, Forestry, Farm), to improve and sustain soil health.

By recording information on soil tests with Soilmentor, Waddesdon created a baseline starting point as well as a future goal for what the estate team want to achieve. Chris finds testing water infiltration rates most interesting as one of the estate’s aims is to increase the soils capacity to store water and make it more resilient to drought. Doing the VESS test has highlighted how much topsoil they really have and the difference between arable fields and permanent pasture.

Chris said “Generally the lack of earthworms across the whole estate was a surprise, we would love to see an increase. Soilmentor is so simple – it’s an amazing tool. I find the app extremely easy, I record soil test results on my phone and when I get back to office it’s all there in one place on the computer. It makes you look at things a bit differently, giving a wider picture, something to reference and understand how to improve. All Heads of Department can access the data online too so that now everyone is working together to improve soil health across the estate. We are always learning and want to share our knowledge for the present and the future. I spout regenerative agriculture at every opportunity, even when I’m talking to other parents at my son’s football matches!”

Chris’s management goals

  • Improve soil health and build regenerative farming system
  • Improve profitability
  • Reduce chemical inputs
  • Disturb the soil less

What is Chris measuring?

  • Infiltration rate
  • Earthworms
  • Slake test
  • VESS
  • Rhizosheaths
  • Field photo diaries

Interested in using Soilmentor to monitor soil health and manage your farm both above and below ground?

Buy the app here and sign up for our newsletter. 

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Video series: How to monitor your own soils
Video series: How to monitor your own soils 1024 512 Soilmentor

To help you get started with soil monitoring watch our videos on how to do key soil tests, use the Soilmentor app and look at results on the website.

 

VESS TEST

Learn what to look for when you visually analyse your soil structure:

 

EARTHWORM COUNT

The best technique for counting earthworms in your soil sample:

 

SLAKE TEST

Watch how to collect a soil sample in the field and see how well your soil structure withstands water:

 

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HOW TO ANALYSE YOUR RESULTS

How to log in to your Soilmentor account and analyse your results:

 

RHIZOSHEATHS

This is an additional test to assess biological activity, although not considered a key test. Find out what to look out for:

 

INFILTRATION RATE VIDEO COMING SOON..!

See our free online soils guide for soil tests you can do at home and find out how our app Soilmentor helps you record & learn how your soil is changing.

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Know your Soils #11: The VESS Test
Know your Soils #11: The VESS Test 765 428 Soilmentor

Welcome to the eleventh instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

How to visually assess your soil structure

Short video created by the Soilmentor Team

Assess the quality of your soil structure for yourself with a spade, tray, ruler and smartphone. Soil structure shows how much biological activity is happening, how well water can infiltrate downwards and how well plants are being nourished. It is core to soil health!

It takes some practise! This short video will show you what to expect:

 

Scoring your soil sample with the VESS chart

Once you have measured the top and bottom depths of your sample, you need to score each one using the VESS chart.

When scoring your sample the VESS guidelines encourage you to ask yourself: Are the clumps angular? Do they have roots running through them? How easy is it to break them down? How porous are they? With gentle pressure breaking them down what size are most of the clumps?

We found many farmers find these questions quite difficult. In the video we simplify the process: it is easiest to observe what soil looks like when you break it apart during the test. If the pieces are mainly angular then give a score of 3-5 and if they are mainly ‘bobbly’ or crumb-like give a of score 1-2. Don’t understand what we mean by ‘bobbly’? Watch the video and you will see! The app helps you with the scoring when you are out in the field too.

 

What does a healthy soil look like?

Well aggregated soil gets first prize in the VESS test! This means that the soil particles are in a crumb structure: there are smaller particles holding together around plant roots.

Soil is aggregated by biological activity; microbes and soil organisms digest organic matter and glue the soil particles together.

Aggregated soil is good because it allows air and water to percolate and store between the particles, which fosters plant growth and supports all soil flora and fauna to thrive.

Soil may lose it’s aggregation structure due to compaction or a lack of biological activity. If you work on improving your soil with the 6 soil health principles you can regenerate it, restoring it’s life and aggregation.

 

See our free online soils guide for soil tests you can do at home and find out how our app Soilmentor helps you record & learn how your soil is changing.

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Know your Soils #10: Soil Test Calendar
Know your Soils #10: Soil Test Calendar 1754 1240 Soilmentor

Welcome to the tenth instalment of our Know your Soils series sharing practical tips for monitoring the soil health on your land. Keep an eye out for our bitesize videos and fact sheets on simple tests you can do yourself on farm.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

When and how often should you do soil tests?

Soil test calendar created by the Soilmentor team

Taking the first steps on your soil monitoring journey involves some essential decision making! Firstly, which soil tests are right for your farm as well as when and where you are going to do them?

Certain tests are best done at certain times of year, and like most things in farming, this is due to the weather. On the calendar you can see the key soil tests, when and how often to do them. Choose a minimum of 3 of the key tests and ideally do them all on the same day.

Deciding when and how often to do the tests

Deciding which fields to test

If you want to get an overview of how your soil is doing choose fields which are managed differently, for example, one arable field, one permanent pasture, one herbal ley and so on.

A few farmers have wanted to better understand how soil changes across their rotation, or under cumulative years of a herbal ley. In both these cases, choose one field from each part of the cycle to look at how the soil changes over time.

If you are concerned about the performance of different fields choose to test a couple of your worst fields and a couple of your best and then try different management practices to improve the worst ones so they look more like the best.

Choose fields where you can experiment with different management practices and make changes, so that the results from your soil tests can inform what to do next. If you found poor soil on a field under a restrictive stewardship scheme it could be frustrating that you can’t do anything about it.

Most importantly, only choose as many fields as are manageable and which are easily accessible, ideally not too far from each other. Planning to test 3 fields and doing it is better than planning to test 6, feeling overwhelmed, and not doing any!

Where to do the tests on the field

As a basic rule you want to do each test a minimum of 3 times on each field to get a representative sample. It’s important to not do them too close to the edge of the field too. Certain tests such as the plate meter are better conducted more randomly – for these you can also try walking a W in the field and testing along it. 

If you want to get the most accurate representative sample do 1 test every 8 acres in a field, but sticking to the rule of 3s is easier and will give you good results too!

Once you’ve decided on the location of your sample sites within each field, you can add the exact GPS location of the sites into the Soilmentor app, so you can make sure to return to the same sites for a more accurate comparison next time you go out testing! Read more about this feature here.

To remind yourself of the different soil tests you can choose from, and how to do them, see the full list here.

 

See our free online soils guide for soil tests you can do at home and find out how our app Soilmentor helps you record & learn how your soil is changing.

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