Soils For Life coaching webinar with Nicole Masters and Soilmentor

In this webinar, agroecologist Nicole Masters speaks to three farmers from the Soils For Life (SFL) programme in Australia. SFL is a non-profit organisation that supports Australian farmers to regenerate their soils. In this session, Nicole explores each farmer’s individual context through their Regen Dashboard, helping them to figure out next steps to improve their soils.

Donna Winter-Irving runs a mixed grazing enterprise just north of Melbourne. The farm currently runs 640 ewes and 260 lambs, with profits stemming from lamb, mutton and wool sales. Their goal is to regenerate their soils to reduce flood risk. 

First, Nicole assesses Donna’s images of a pasture that sees a lot of grazing activity with short recovery periods in between. Photos of this sample area indicate that the soil is highly compacted and unlikely to be absorbing and storing rainwater. There are also different shades of colour within the soil; Nicole suggests this is because water infiltration is concentrated at the top of the soil sample with little soil mixing occurring. A good way to test whether the different colours in your soil are related to infiltration is to spray the soil sample all over with some water and assess whether the colours even out after moisture is added. 

The second soil sampling location in Donna’s Regen Dashboard has heavy clay soil and little plant diversity. Donna describes this paddock as ‘constipated and really heavy’, with her aim being to aerate the soil without the use of machinery. Nicole shares that the key to aerating soils is to introduce more organic material, followed by plant diversity. It is important to examine; are you seeing litter build-up? If so, what colour is it? Do you see greys, blacks or whites? Generally, if you encounter more whites in the plant litter, this can indicate that your plants aren’t good biological material for microbes to feed on. Nicole elaborates that once we improve the nutritional profile of our plants, they’ll become more of a golden colour when decomposing. She also suggests looking at livestock dung; poor litter breakdown will correspond with the speed and efficiency of your dung breakdown, and you’ll see fewer beetles in low quality forage dung.

Lastly, Nicole emphasises the use of livestock as a tool for mixing your soils. It is important to ask: what can I give to my animals to make their dung more palatable for dung beetles, worms and soil biology? These might look like prebiotics, probiotics or anything to stimulate the rumen or gut of the livestock being grazed. A good manure should be gone within two days of its deposit, having been incorporated into the soil by dung beetles and other burrowing organisms.

James Manning runs a 1200 acre thoroughbred horse farm with a small cattle herd, just north of Melbourne. They have been moving towards a more sustainable way of managing soil health on the farm. 

The first sample is from a paddock that has been sown with a multiple species equine mix. The paddock has historically been compacted, with low calcium and magnesium. In the last couple of years, James has cultivated the soil to break up compaction, as well as adding dolomite and green manures. James has recently taken brix barometer readings in the field, tracking how they change over time in accordance with what he is adding to the soil; an initial brix comparison between some cereal oats and fat hen from the paddock found that the fat hen had a higher brix reading, indicating that the soil is favouring the growth of non-desirable plant species over crops. After applying a foliar spray with calcium and sea minerals to the paddock, James found that the brix readings changed; the cereal oats now read higher on the refractometer, with the fat hen reading lower. Nicole explains how this shift in brix readings shows that the crops are now in a healthier condition than the weeds. Nicole also adds that an abundance of fat hen in a paddock can be an indicator of accumulated nitrates in the soil. 

Note: Brix readings are most accurately measured early in the season, before a plant starts sending sugars up to the seed head and leaves of the plant when it is nearing the end of its life cycle. This process will occur differently in perennials; these sugars will travel back down to the roots of the plant after seeding has occurred, in preparation for next years flowering cycle.

Russell manages a 70 hectare farm in southern New South Wales. He has a mixture of cropping, livestock and rice paddies with the view to researching regenerative rice growing methods.

A few small observations from Russell’s first sample site indicate that there is a lack of soil biology; Nicole spots that the rows from previous year’s seedings are still intact, indicating that biological activity hasn’t smoothed over the surface of the soil as it should have done. However, Nicole also spotted that there is some evidence of saprotrophic fungi; this often occurs as dark green circles of ground coverage in the field, which will house a layer of thick mesh-like hyphae under the soil surface. The dark green growth shows that the fungi is active and releasing a lot of phosphorus and nutrients below, which is great to encourage across your whole property! 

Russell has also been spending some time testing the pH of his soils. He has found that in the lower soil profile, his soils are more neutral or slightly alkaline in pH, but in the upper soil profile, the soil was much more acidic. Nicole suggests that sodium in the lower layers of his soil profile could be contributing to the alkaline pH reading, and that it is always worth taking soil samples from both 0-15cm and 15-30cm sections of your soil profile and sending them off to the lab to discover what minerals could be lying untapped. An extension of this exercise could be to test the pH of some rhizosheath soil to compare to the surrounding soil. This is a great way to test whether your rhizosheaths are protecting your plant roots; a healthy rhizosheath can protect your plant’s roots by up to two units in pH. A top tip to give your plant’s roots and rhizosphere a boost is to bioprime your seeds before sowing.

• Make sure to assess whether your soil has different shades of colour in it. If yes, then assess whether these shades are due to localised moisture or another factor

• What colour do your plants turn when they are decomposing? If your plants decompose to shades of white, this can tell you that your plants aren’t good biological material for microbes to feed on. If your plants are turning a golden colour, they are very good biological material for microbes

• Think about using animal prebiotics and probiotics! A healthy animal rumen or gut will help support the development of underground biodiversity, and therefore the breakdown of organic matter

• If you don’t have any machinery, then grazing will be your number 1 tool for enhancing soil biodiversity

• Make sure to test the brix barometer readings of your crops and compare it with your weeds – this can be especially useful to track before and after foliars or inputs have been added to the soil

• Try testing the PH of the upper (0-15cm) and lower (15-30cm) portions of the soil profile, you’ll likely find that the results are different. You can also test the rhizosphere soil and compare it to surrounding soil, to indicate how much your rhizosphere is protecting your roots from the PH of the soil

• Bioprime your seeds to give them boost into developing a healthy rhizosphere

Thank you to Soils For Life and Nicole Masters for hosting this webinar! We love seeing how farmers using Soilmentor can learn from their observations using the Regen Platform, or by sharing their results remotely to consultants and coaches.

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