Isle of Man coaching webinar with Nicole Masters and Soilmentor

In this online coaching session, Nicole Masters talks to three Manx farmers who are enrolled in the Isle of Man Government’s (DEFA) Soil Health Initiative (SHI) Scheme. Nicole delves into each farmer’s individual farming context and details how they can use Soilmentor alongside their observations to support soil regeneration.

We also want to give a big thank you to Kayleigh, David, Christina and Juan for sharing access to your Soilmentor accounts so that we can all learn from your results! 

Kayleigh is a dairy, beef and arable farmer, who is hoping to increase the profitability of her farm through reducing high cost inputs and improving her soil’s health and productivity. 

Kayleigh shares her results and photos from a silage field that has a compacted ‘cow pan’ layer of soil, identifiable by its 5-10cm depth and fast development between cultivations; this is often symptomatic of grazing animals in wet weather. Nicole concludes that the soil here is lacking microbial life, resulting in a lack of ‘bounce-back’ ability when structural damage has occurred. In a healthy soil ecosystem, compacted layers or ‘pans’ can take as little as 6 weeks to heal! 

Nicole also identifies rust in Kayleigh’s soil profile, signalling a rising water table. At some stage, the water level rose with an iron solution in it, and when the water retreated, the iron reacted with oxygen to form rust. This can affect the pH of soils. Additional photos of the soil profile revealed little rhizosheath formation on plant roots, which provide protection from an unfavourable pH in the surrounding soil. To remedy this, Nicole suggests that Kayleigh bioprimes her seeds with vermicasts, compost or humate-type products to boost rhizosheath development in the early growth stages.

Kayleigh’s soils also indicated a presence of insect pests, including leatherjackets, clover root weevils, and wireworms, pointing towards more acidic soil conditions, higher moisture levels, and a lack of pest-suppressive microbes. Nicole stresses that it is important to test your soil throughout the seasons, as soil insect pests have a life cycle, and you want to be able to spot them when they are visible.

David is a dairy farmer transitioning from a traditional high-input New Zealand style grazing to a regenerative system. He has been working to increase biodiversity, resilience, and soil fertility on his farm. 

At a first glance of a photo of one of David’s pastures, Nicole noted that there were multiple patches of darker green foliage growing in David’s field where cowpats or urine has been deposited. This suggests that there is an underlying issue with nutrient deficiency in the pasture, causing increased growth where the grass has been fertilised by cow manure or urine. Nicole gives us a tip on how to identify which nutrient your soil needs: if these darker growth patches have lots of clover in them, this can indicate a potassium deficiency in the soil. If it is just grass growing, then it is likely to be a nitrogen-related issue. 

David has found that after he stopped using fly spray and wormers on his cows, he has seen an increase of the number of dung beetles in his cowpats, and how quickly they break down now as a result (within 24 days). To dig further into David’s journey enhancing his farm’s ecosystem, read our case study on Ballagawne farm here. 

The final field David shares is Ballarhennie, which had been set-stocked for 50 years, and now has a very slow infiltration rate, despite having good structure. Nicole theorises that this could be due to a waxy coating on the plant material or from specific organisms, which can cause water repellency. David plans to use an aerator to kick start the system, with Nicole advising to follow it up with biological stimulants like molasses and worm castings to ‘wake the system up’. The molasses will feed the soil microbes, while the organisms in the worm castings can help break down the waxy coatings and improve water infiltration.

Christina and Juan are sheep farmers with soils that are very wet in winter and very dry in summer. They have been experimenting with various ways to maintain a balance of moisture on their land. 

Christina and Juan have been planting herbal leys to break up the soil compaction in some of their fields. This has worked well on a field that was often wet and flood prone, where the deep roots of plants like chicory and plantain have broken up the soil profile and improved drainage. In another field, the water infiltration rate was extremely fast, which Nicole identified as a potential indicator of ‘thirsty soil’ with low organic matter. 

Christina and Juan have been using the Merlin app to record what birds they hear around the fields. They’ve found that there is a diversity of bird species on the farm that they hadn’t thought would be present, which has drawn their attention to the importance of observation. Nicole furthers that when we increase insect biodiversity, we will see the number of birds increase. Nicole suggests tracking bird sound for 10 minutes one morning of the week for the entire year, so you can see which birds are coming and going from your land over a longer period of time. 

Lastly, Nicole takes a look at Christina and Juan’s legume nodulation photos to assess how productive their nitrogen fixing plants are. Christina and Juan haven’t yet pinched their nodules to see what colour they are inside; Nicole shares that if the inside of your nodules is white, that means they aren’t producing nitrogen, if they are red, nitrogen fixation is occurring, and if they are green, they were previously fixing nitrogen but not anymore. If the inside of your nodules are white, this might be due to a deficiency of micronutrients such as cobalt or molybdenum in your soils; if this is the case, you can add some seaweed to your soils or seed dressings to make sure that your plants have the nutrients needed to kick start the nitrogen fixing process. Nicole shares that if a legume plant isn’t receiving its ‘return on investment’ with the bacteria producing nitrogen in its nodules, then it’ll actually begin shedding them completely.

• Sample your soils and carry out observations all year around – Testing your soils at different times of the year allows you to spot soil insect pests when they become large enough to spot by eye.
• Observing birds on your farm all year round will help you gauge a better idea of which species are coming and going throughout the seasons.
• Try taking a soil sample from a depth of 15-30cm in the soil profile – This is important to build an understanding of why your roots aren’t growing beyond a certain length, or assessing which minerals might be stuck lower down in the soil profile out of the reach of plants. This can also uncover layers of past fertiliser or lime applications which can be tapped into. 
• Infiltration rate is a key indicator of your soil ecosystem functioning – A soil sample can appear to have good structure, but a real test is its infiltration rate. This highlights the importance of using a range of different tests to get a complete picture of soil health.

Top tip from Christina and Juan:

• Christina and Juan have devised their own way to record their rooting depth, which was to dig into the soil and turn the soil upside down, measuring from the roots down to the soil surface to get their measurement.

Thank you to the Isle of Man Government (DEFA), Nicole Masters, and the Manx farmers who took part in this webinar! We love seeing how Soilmentor can be used to help farmers improve their productivity, resilience and profitability.

Get in touch with us at info@vidacycle.com if you are interested in using Soilmentor with your farming network or organisation!