▶ Soil Health: What is it, and how do you impact it on your farm?

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OK.

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So welcome, everybody.

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Thanks for joining us today.

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My name is Emilee Gaulke.

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I’m a diversified vegetable educator with UW–Madison Division of Extension.

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And today we’re going to be talking about soil health, what it is, how you can impact it on your farm.

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And I just want to start by acknowledging this can be a bit of an overwhelming topic.

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It’s a fairly popular topic these days, but I think it can be a little confusing just hearing hearing about soil health in general and not quite knowing what it is.

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And even if you have an idea of what it is, I think it could be a little intimidating going where to start.

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So the goal for the end of our time together is that you have some concrete steps you can take to both measure health of your soil on your farm and take steps towards implementing some different practices to support and improve your soil health.

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The great news is you can learn a lot about soil health just with some simple in field observations.

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So if you’re a farmer, I know you’re already making observations every day when you’re out in your field.

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You know the nuances of your land and your soil just based on working with it every day.

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So you can get a lot of great information this way.

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So what we’re going to be covering today is what is soil health?

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So we could all be on the same page when we’re talking about this.

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We’ll talk about why you should care, the roles that healthy soils play for us.

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Then we’ll be talking about those observations I mentioned to determine where your soil health is right now, and then some practices you can implement to improve it going forward.

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So what is soil health?

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The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service defines it as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem to sustain plants, animals and humans.

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And I think the emphasis here really needs to be an ecosystem.

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And it’s really about the the functions that healthy soils play for us.

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So some of these functions include plant growth and support that physical stability.

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And the medium for roots to anchor into next is habitat and food for organisms that live in our soil.

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This includes things like earthworms, but also fungus and bacteria.

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And there’s this really cool reciprocal relationship between our plants and the fungus and bacteria.

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So our crops, they provide sugar or produce sugar not only for themselves, but also share it with the fungus and bacteria who in turn help our plants.

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Excess nutrients, for example, they might not be otherwise able to access.

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On the topic of nutrients, healthy soil is important for nutrient cycling and availability.

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And when we say availability, we mean the amount of nutrients available to our plants in our soil and also how easy it is for our plants to access them.

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So when we add nutrients to our soil, like you would apply a fertilizer for example, we want our soil to really hold on to that for us and provide it for plants when they need it.

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And these organisms that we just mentioned are key to converting nutrients into plant available forms and cycling the nutrients for us.

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So think about at the end of the season, if you leave that your plants die, you leave them on top of your soil, That residue, the large soil organisms like the earthworms, they’re really important for breaking that down into smaller pieces, moving it into your soil profile and making it more accessible to smaller microbes.

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These microbes then further break it down into nutrients that are available for the plants.

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Soil often has important nutrients for our plants, but not always in the correct form.

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So some an example here would be nitrogen.

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If you are applying nitrogen, there’s something like compost or manure.

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That nitrogen is actually tied up with carbon, so it actually needs to be.

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It needs to interact with our microbes.

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The microbes need to eat that carbon and release that nitrogen for our plants to then be able to use it.

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And the great thing is that healthy soils actually have the potential to reduce input costs because of the cycling that it can do for us.

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The last function we’re going to be talking about is water management.

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So when it rains, we obviously want the water to soak into our soil rather than sitting on top and ponding.

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And we also don’t want it to run off because that leads things like erosion and then that water is not available for future plant use.

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So you can think about like 2 extremes here.

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On one end, if you have like a really heavy clay soil, your soil could be like a bucket.

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It just holds all that water and floods your crops.

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On the other end, maybe a really sandy soil, your water is just like a drain.

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The water just moves through, it doesn’t hold any water for future crop use.

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So healthy soil brings us somewhere in the middle, just the right amount of water, plant use without flooding our crops.

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Of course, there’s some exceptions or limits to this.

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In recent years, we’ve seen an increase in precipitation swings where we have these really heavy rains and really rainy periods and then drought for a while.

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And of course, unfortunately, if you receive like 8 inches of rain in a day or just a couple of days, like I unfortunately know has happened in Wisconsin in the last week, that might exceed the limit of what our soils may get to hold or infiltrate for us.

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But a healthy soil will be able to help you recover from that faster.

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So soil health includes the chemical, the physical and the biological properties of your soil.

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When we’re thinking about chemical, think things like pH, cation, exchange capacity, nutrient availability, things that you would learn from taking a soil test and then using those results to determine nutrient applications.

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We’re not going to dig into the chemical aspect today because that’s a whole webinar in of it in and of itself.

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But fall is a great time to test your soil.

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So if you do live in Wisconsin, be on the lookout for soil sampling field days this fall and then webinars this winter.

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Really digging into how to interpret the soil test results.

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And while we’re not going to cover chemical today, it’s important to mention it because these three chemical, physical and biological, they all interact and influence one another to lead to our soil health.

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So if we’re not focused on chemicals, on the chemical aspect, we are losing an important piece of our soil health puzzle.

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So today we’ll talk about biological, who actually lives in our soil, and physical, which is the structure of our soil.

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And before we mention the cool reciprocal relationship between the soil microorganisms and our crops, this is another example of the really cool reciprocal relationship between who lives in our soil and our structure.

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So many of the functions that we need from our soil come from good soil structure.

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And this soil structure we’re going to learn in a minute here, is in part built by the organisms in our soil.

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And then in turn, the structure of our soil impacts who is able to live in our soil by providing that habitat that we just mentioned.

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So the interaction here really depends on or determines our soil functions.

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So let’s stick into the physical structure of our soil.

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What gives soil its structure is known as an aggregate, which is basically like a clump or a cluster of different parts of soil held together.

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So on the smallest level here we have these micro aggregates.

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This is individual particles of sand, silt and clay, think the primary building blocks of your soil and those are bound to organic matter.

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An organic matter is anything that is or was living.

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So things like plant roots, the microorganisms we just mentioned, plant residue on top of your soil that gets broken down and mixed in.

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And as we see here, organic matter is really important for a soil structure, but it also helps with water holding capacity and it’s a reservoir for some important plant nutrients.

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So these soil particles, the sand, silt and clay and organic matter are held together.

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What you can think of as like a glue, it’s known as a root exudate.

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It’s like a sugary substance released by our roots.

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And then these micro aggregates build these bigger macro aggregates that are held together like by things like the plant roots, fungus and bacteria.

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So the way these macro aggregates are stacked together is really key to providing the structure that we need to support the microbes, our root and water movement.

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And we want these solid stable parts, but we also want pore space between them.

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So for example, think of like a sponge.

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It’s able to hold a lot of water for us, but it also has those pore spaces in it.

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You can also think of if you’re excited about World Cup this summer, like I am a a stack of soccer balls.

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So even if they’re packed as tightly as they can be, there’s still space for things to move around.

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And our case would be roots and water.

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So you can see that in the picture on the left part, this picture here, we can see the pore spaces and the clear clumps or clusters here.

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It really allows our roots to move deeper into our soil, access water, nutrients that might be hard to to access if the roots were really shallow.

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The water’s able to nicely move through our soil profile versus on the right here thinking about like a stack of bricks, there’s not really any room for the roots for the water to move.

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So you see our roots are really limited.

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We even see it stunting above ground of our crops and the water’s not really able to move into our soil.

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It’s just kind of running off and this is more of like a like a loose pile of sand, for example.

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So arrangement of these clusters and the pore space is really key for our healthy soil.

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Before we move into the observations you can actually be making on your farm, I just want to talk about context and how this really impacts your soil health.

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So there’s many different characteristics of our soil.

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We have things like soil texture, the pH, nutrient availability.

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Some of these characteristics like nutrient availability have a pretty large response to the practices we implement, while others like soil organic matter or texture, you really have little to no control over, especially soil texture.

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So I just want to take a minute to dive into soil texture a little bit.

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And this is how much sand, silt or clay is present in your soil.

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It’s an inherent characteristic of your soil.

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It’s based on the plant material our soils come from.

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And again, that means you’re going to have really no impact on how much of these you have in your soil.

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And when we’re thinking about how that impacts our soil health, if you look at sand particles here, those are the biggest particles.

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And they just because of their size, they naturally have some more pore space, kind of like those soccer balls we talked about.

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This means even if you’re working to build soil structure, for example, and increase organic matter, this, these sandy particles mean you won’t be able to hold as much water as you would if you have a clay soil, but you’re also less prone to things like compaction.

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And then if we think about a clay soil, kind of the opposite end of the spectrum here, these are the smallest particles.

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They stacked together a little bit more like the bricks we were talking about, unfortunately more prone to things like compaction.

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So the practices we’re going to talk about today will help you build healthy soil on your farm, no matter soil type or your starting point.

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But how you implement them, the ones you choose to implement and outcomes are a little bit based on your farms characteristics.

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And then one more thing I want to bring up here with context is time scale.

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So something like nutrient availability, that’s something you can change in a relatively short period of time.

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Something like soil organic matter on the other hand, you can have an impact on it, but it takes a long time.

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Soil organic matter depends on many different factors, your climates, the parent material of your soil, topography, management practices.

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And just to give you an idea, lower organic matter soils.

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So if you’re starting with less 2% or less, you might see changes within three to five years of changing your management practices.

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If you’re starting with a little bit of higher amount of organic matter, like 4 to 7%, it can take up to 7 to 10 years.

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So you can have an impact.

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But don’t get discouraged if you don’t see a change like right away in the next season.

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OK, let’s get into determining the health of your soil.

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There’s a cool cycle that I think we can use to help us kind of wrap our heads up on this and it’s going to help us guide future management decisions.

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So the first step is really getting the baseline where you’re starting out with your soil right now, this season, once you know where your soil is, we’re going to set goals, make decisions about what practices we want to implement to try to reach those goals.

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And then over time, this will be a couple year process, you want to monitor and evaluate, see if you’re actually reaching your goals and how it works on your farm.

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So let’s get into the observations that you could be making.

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So my colleague Ann is going to share a chart with you if you want to follow along on that.

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Otherwise, a lot of the pictures are on the slides here.

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It’s just a front and back one, one page PDF that you can easily print off, take out into the field with you and help you guide your observations.

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So the first observation we’re going to be making is about our aggregate stability.

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This is how strong those groups or clusters are able to resist breaking into pieces when something like it rains or people walk on it or equipment drives over it.

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And this is linked to the soil’s ability to maintain structure when that force is placed on it and resist erosion.

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This depends on things like, again, who is living in our soil, the number of roots that we have in our soil, lot of organic matter, again, because of that glue that they provide and being an important part of our aggregates.

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So what can you look for in your field?

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So if you look at the picture on the left and in the middle here, we see these defined clusters, We see the pore space.

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The roots are able to move through our soil nicely for us.

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Whereas if you look at the picture on the right here, that soil looks really dense.

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You don’t see any of those pore spaces or clusters.

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It looks like the root movement is really limited and it’s really useful to make this observation in a few different areas of your field.

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As I’m sure you’ve probably experienced on your farm, different areas can have some slightly different characteristics, So one area might be slightly sandier than another, or maybe 1 area gets managed slightly differently than another.

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So we want to think about this as like a soil test.

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Rather than taking like 1 sample, we want to take some random samples from across our field and really get like a representative idea of what our field then soil health is at that time.

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If you have more time, it’s relatively easy to take this test a step further.

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There’s something called the slake test.

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So again, Ann, if you wouldn’t mind, please adding the UW handout to the chat for us, this is going to explain in a little more detail about what this test is measuring and how to do it.

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And then the Soil Health Institute also just made this really cool slake test app that it’s free, you download, take it out in the field.

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To run this test, you really need pretty simple equipment, just a couple like jars or cups with some water and some mesh to hold the soil.

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So again, this is going to be measuring how strong or stable the aggregates are.

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And the basic idea is you’re going to get an aggregate from the top 2 inches of your soil from two different areas, one with your normal management practices and one from an area that has not been disturbed, like along your fence row.

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And that’s going to be your comparison.

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You want to dry the samples and then once they are dry, you’re going to place them on the mesh and water for 10 minutes and see how the aggregates respond.

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So if you have a nice strong stable aggregate, as the water moves into those pore spaces, they’ll be able to hold together better and keep their shape.

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Whereas if you have a weak aggregate, as that water moves in, they’re not able to hold together.

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They kind of break apart or slake.

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Hence the name of the test.

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The next thing you can look at is compaction.

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This is you’re going to be looking for similar things that you were looking for with your aggregate stability.

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So the picture on the left here on the right part, we see the soil with some clear aggregates.

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Looks like the roots are able to move through kind of like the looser fluffier texture that we’re looking for.

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Whereas the shovel, the soil in the shovel here, it looks very dense.

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It’s almost like a rock.

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And you can also probably easily detect this if you go to dig into your soil when there’s some moisture in it.

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If it’s really hard to dig into, likely indicates compaction.

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And then you can also look at the root movement.

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So the picture on the right here, we see the, the roots were moving down, but then they hit that really hard compacted zone you’ve probably heard of like a tillage pan before or a plow pan.

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The roots hit that and then they have to move laterally.

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So again can affect our our crop above ground as well.

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The next thing is surface crusting.

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Again, this is going to be very related to our aggregate stability in that pore space.

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And you might have seen this on some soils before.

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It’s that hard layer that you get on the top of your soil.

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And what causes crusting is, are things like excessive tillage, water droplets hitting bare soil, like you’re seeing the soil here.

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And as the water hits the the bare soil, the aggregates get broken up into smaller and smaller aggregates and particles over time.

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And eventually when they’re small enough, they can settle in and block those pore spaces that we once had.

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And this basically causes the soil surface to like seal over that can prevent water from infiltrating into our soil.

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And also if you direct seeded a crop before this thrust formed, it can actually prevent your crops from emerging because it’s just too hard for those crop seedlings to push through.

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Then as the muddy soil soil surface dries out, you might get some cracking like you see in the pictures here.

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And then you have this layer that’s more dense and compact than soil beneath it.

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So you’ll want to be looking for this after a rain event and if you take a shovel full of soil, the crust will kind of like stay intact in one piece like you see here.

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Kind of a different way to approach looking at soil structure is the movement of water in your fields, if it moved and how it moved.

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So after a normal rain event or irrigation event within 24 hours, we don’t want any ponding on our fields.

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And we also want to look if the water did infiltrate into our soil or move off the field.

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We want to look to see if there’s any of these runoff channels.

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This indicates that we don’t have that nice pore space for the water to move in and leads to things like erosion.

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The last observation we’re going to be talking about today is soil biology.

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So, as we said, the organisms that live in our soil impact many aspects of our soil, like aggregation and nutrient cycling.

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A lot of the organisms like the bacteria are not visible to the naked eye, but you can look for things like earthworms and the channels that they leave behind moving through your soil.

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You can look for invertebrates like springtails and you might even see fungal hyphae, which is in the picture on the right here.

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In general, our goal is we want to see three different types of beneficial soil microorganisms or organisms I should say.

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OK, so we went out in our field, we took our observations.

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Now it’s time to identify our top area for improvement.

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Prioritize just one or two goals to focus on each season.

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Don’t try to fix everything at once and select just a practice or two to implement that will work to address that area.

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So perhaps you noticed some compaction in your fields, some poor water infiltration.

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Maybe you decide you want to try to reduce the amount you’re tilling or maybe you decide in your your system cover crops will work better.

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When you were deciding what practices you want to implement, it is important to remember our principles of soil health.

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These are really focused on maintaining that good structure and a healthy underground community.

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So the first one is minimizing disturbance.

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Focus largely on the structure of our soil and disturbance can be physical like tillage and it can also be chemical.

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So if you apply a chemical to kill the weeds, some bad insects, it can unfortunately also kill the beneficial microbes and other soil life that we depend on.

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So there’s many benefits we get from reducing disturbance.

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We’re maintaining our soil structure, better water infiltration and home for the important microorganisms.

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The next is maximizing living roots.

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This is really about feeding those microorganisms in our soil.

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So as we said early on, the roots for these sugars that feed the bacteria on the fungus and the more types of food and having food available for a longer period of time throughout the year will allow for greater diversity and population of these beneficial organisms.

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And it could be sustained over time rather than having like a big cycle and having to really start from a low a low point of the spring.

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The next is keeping our soil covered.

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So we don’t want bare soil as much as possible.

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And by reducing or by keeping the soil covered, we can reduce the amount of soil that gets washed away.

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We reduce negative impacts from things like rain breaking up our soil aggregates.

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And there’s some also some additional benefits like less evaporation.

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So if we do go into a drought.

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You have more water health for future plant use.

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It can help with temperature regulation of our soil.

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So if you keep your soil covered with something like a plant residue or an organic mulch, that can help keep the soil temperature cooler.

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Well, if you use something like a landscape fabric or plastic mulch, that can actually help raise the temperature of your soil.

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So depending on like time of year the crops are growing, there can be different benefits or drawbacks to each option.

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And then it also serves as weed suppression.

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The next is maximizing crop diversity.

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This is again about feeding those microorganisms in our soil.

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If you are a vegetable farmer supplying a CSA or farmers market for example, you’re already growing a wide diversity of crops on your farm.

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You already know about the many benefits like breaking up pest and disease cycles.

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And the great news is the practices that help these other three principles can also help increase diversity.

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So for example, you might decide you want to plant to cover crop to keep your soil covered for more of the year.

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That is also increasing your diversity.

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The last one that sometimes included, sometimes not, is integrating livestock.

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I know there’s plenty of farmers who either cannot or do not want to integrate livestock.

24:14
That’s fine.

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It can help with the cycling of nutrients.

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But you can get some of the same benefits by applying things like manure.

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OK, so now we are going to get us get into some different management practices that you can try out on your farm this season.

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The first thing we’re going to talk about is tillage.

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Tillage is a common tool used by growers because it has so many short term benefits, can break up big chunks of soil, work amendments and plant residue into your soil, even temporarily loosen the soil to increase water and air movement.

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However, unfortunately, even though it has many of these benefits, it can have some long term negative impacts in our soil if we’re not using it wisely.

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So how does tillage impact your soil?

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It physically breaks up those aggregates, those groups that we depend on for soil structure.

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Tillage is linked to smaller soil aggregates and more compaction.

25:12
And then and additionally, when you till, you’re adding a lot of oxygen into your soil.

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And this actually increases the rate at which organisms in our soil are eating that organic matter.

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And remember, organic matter is really important because it helps with folding water, helps with our soil structure, preventing things like compaction.

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So right after you till, your soil will have this looser texture.

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It might be easier to work in, but then something like it rains or you walk on it.

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And then if the particles are small enough, like we talked about before, they fall into those pore spaces, leading to things like compaction and crusting.

25:51
So in the short term, helpful, but can lead to kind of like this vicious feedback cycle where you’re really depending on tillage to get these functions from our soil that we depend on.

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So we just need to be strategic about how and when we use it.

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So let’s talk about some different methods we can use with our tillage to try to reduce the negative impacts on our structure.

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The first is timing.

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So I know this can be really hard in the spring, especially if you’ve just experienced a heavy rain, but you really need to start planting.

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But as much as you can, avoid tilling when the soil is wet.

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This makes compaction worse.

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It can lead to these large soil clots that are really hard to break up.

26:36
Think about intensity and equipment so when you can use things that are lower intensity so they’ll have less disturbance on your soil structure.

26:47
One thing you can do is set your equipment so it’s not tilling as deep and if you have access you can think about maybe using some different equipment.

26:57
The picture on the left here is of a tine weeder.

26:59
You can get handful versions, but there’s also versions that attach to your BCS or your 4 wheel tractor if you have those on your farm.

27:08
Recently heard from a farm that is successfully using a tine weeder to both get into their fields earlier because they don’t have to worry about that, the intense tillage that’s going to lead to that compaction.

27:20
And then they have also been able to reduce the number of tillage passes before they plant their cover crops because they’re using just this light, light tine weeding on the surface of their soil to take care of the weeds.

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Important thing to note here is that if you’re going to use something like this, timing is really important.

27:40
Unfortunately, this is only going to work on like really small weeds.

27:43
Things like a white thread stage or like just the first cotyledons.

27:48
The next thing you can think about is using a broad fork.

27:51
This really helps loosen your soil, but it’s not actually like inverting your soil turning over so you have less impact on your soil structure.

28:01
The next thing if you have access to it is a power harrow.

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This.

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So think of normal tillage like a rototiller, for example, that’s that’s moving your soil vertically and like turning over that soil layer having a big impact in your structure.

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Whereas something like a power harrow,

28:18
It’s more like an egg beater.

28:19
It’s moving your soil horizontally, so not as big of an impact, but you can still get a really nice seed bed if you’re trying to direct seed into it.

28:27
And it can also help with weed control.

28:29
But again, this needs to be used on smaller weeds.

28:33
So there’s still some specific cases you might weed with more intense worms, like a cultivator.

28:41
You know, unfortunately if you have disease issue and you really want to chop up that crop at the end of the season and help that residue get worked into the soil so it breaks down faster, so you don’t carry those diseases over to your next season.

28:55
I’m sure we’ve unfortunately all had it happen where we just get out of control and really big.

28:59
In that case, you know, it might be best to just really till it in and get up, get a fresh start.

29:05
But again, we just want to make sure we’re being purposeful and strategic with how and when we’re using our tillage.

29:12
Another thing you can think about is combining tillage with other practices.

29:15
So maybe you’re still using some tillage, but you’re just not using it all the time.

29:20
One thing you can use is tarping.

29:23
Tarping can be really helpful for things like cover crop termination or breakdown of crop residue.

29:30
The thing to note here is it does unfortunately take more time.

29:33
You need like at least two to three weeks to have that tarp on your soil surface to have it breakdown.

29:38
So if you’re in a time crunch, might not be your best option.

29:43
Tarps can also be really useful for weed management.

29:46
So for example, you harvest a bed, you’re not going to plant it, plant in it for maybe two or three weeks, you can put a tarp down.

29:54
This prevents weeds from moving into that bare soil.

29:58
Any shallow seeds that germinate will just die under that tarp because they’re not getting sunlight.

30:02
And of course, you have the added benefit of keeping your soil covered to protect our structure, prevent things like erosion.

30:11
If you are using tillage for something like breaking up compaction, you can think about maybe some different cover crops, especially ones that have long taproots such as Sudan grass.

30:24
There’s also tillage radish that can be a bit tricky, especially on these diversified vegetable farms where you’re growing other brassica crops.

30:32
Because unfortunately, something like a tillage radish can introduce something like black rot or just be a green bridge basically to carry black rot into your next season.

30:42
So some farmers use it, but I know a lot of people like to avoid it just because of that disease risk.

30:50
So let’s take a little bit more into cover crops.

30:53
So there’s many benefits that come from using cover crops, keeping your soil covered.

30:59
We have those living roots to feed those microorganisms, protects your soil from things like heavy rain.

31:06
When you terminate your cover crop, if that residue gets worked on into your soil, you’re providing more organic matter.

31:13
The cover crops you choose are going to depend on several different factors.

31:17
So first think about what benefits am I trying to get from my cover crops?

31:22
If you’re just trying to provide some coverage of your soil and prevent erosion, you need less biomass than if you want to do something like suppress weeds, for example.

31:34
Next, think about what equipment you have available to you.

31:37
So if you plant something like an oat and pea mix, like on the top cover here, that’s going to winterkill.

31:43
So you’re not going to have to worry about termination.

31:46
Whereas if you plant something like a winter rye in the bottom cover here, that will survive the winter and you’re going to have to have a way to terminate it in the spring.

31:54
The good news is there are some pretty low tech options to terminate it, but just decide if if that’s something you want to have to deal with.

32:06
Next is thinking about the time of year you’re planting your cover crops.

32:09
So often we’ll have crops going into like late September, for example, and then when we’re in the later season and the weather’s getting cooler, we need to choose something like a winter rye because that’s really the only thing that we’ll be able to get established that late in the season.

32:27
And then finally, think about what you’re planting next in that area.

32:31
Of course, we want to think about proper rotation, but also coming back to this termination piece.

32:37
So if we want to get into this bed and plant something really early next spring, maybe we want to plant a cover crop that’s going to winterkill so we don’t have to worry about termination before we’re able to plant.

32:50
If you’re not sure what cover crop is a good option for you, there’s this really great tool from the Midwest Cover Crop Council.

32:57
It’ll ask you just a little bit of basic information like where you’re located, the time of year you want to plant, what benefits you want to get, and then it’ll give you a list of some potential options that you can use.

33:12
The last practice we’re going to be talking about is mulch.

33:15
So mulch has many of the same benefits as the cover crops, except for not the living roots, but it keeps your soil covered, protecting that structure and preventing erosion.

33:28
You can use things like landscape fabric or plastic mulch, and then there’s also organic mulch options like straw or terminated cover crops.

33:37
One thing to keep in mind here is if you are using something like a terminated cover crop, a can tie of nutrients as it breaks down.

33:44
So you’re going to need to add a little more fertility to your soil so you don’t have any negative effects on the crop yield.

33:54
OK, so you made it to the last two steps here of our soil health cycle.

34:00
So when you’re determining if a practice works on your farm, we want to think not only of the soil health metrics we talked about today, like the aggregate stability or compaction, but also think of other trade-offs or kind of like secondary goals on your farm.

34:17
So there are some trade-offs with making these changes we need to think about like time and labor needs for a particular task that it that it shifts our time and labor needs in a way that’s workable or make something way too time consuming.

34:32
Think about shifts and costs.

34:34
So for example, the price of cover crop seeds, but maybe you save money in other ways because your soil is healthier.

34:42
You can think about do you need a new piece of equipment to successfully implement to practice and maybe you just don’t have that money right now to buy that equipment.

34:50
Look at other kind of again, secondary goals like is there an impact on disease pressure?

34:55
Maybe I have less disease than I used to.

34:57
Maybe there’s more pollinators on my farm.

35:00
And I think something that kind of gets overlooked sometimes is, does it make it the task more enjoyable or at least tolerable on your farm?

35:08
Or is it just like a pain to implement?

35:10
You hate it?

35:12
If that’s the case, maybe don’t use this practice on your farm.

35:15
There’s many practices we can implement to get some of these benefits.

35:19
So maybe just think about, is there a way you can tweak it or implement something else?

35:28
So I hope the biggest things that you take away from today are that the health of your soil has a big impact on your crops, and you can have many positive impacts by implementing these practices that fit under the principles of soil health.

35:41
Great news is we can start with these relatively simple in-field observations.

35:47
Just keep in mind there are some characteristics of your soil that you might not have the most control over, like texture.

35:54
So soil health on your farm might not look the same as on someone else’s farm, even if you’re implementing the same practices.

36:02
And again, you might find that some practices work better in your farm or in your system than others.

36:08
So I encourage you to just start experimenting this season.

36:11
Start small, maybe just one or two beds, and talk to other farmers about what they’re doing.

36:16
If they have a similar system to what you have on your farm, maybe you have an idea that it might work a little better than a different practice.

36:26
If you were in Wisconsin, there were going are going to be several soil health field days this summer.

36:30
So be on the lookout for that and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.

36:34
My contact information is here.

36:37
And also, if you don’t save this e-mail and you want to reach out later, if you go on to the UW Madison Extension Crops and Soils webpage, there’s a quick contact us button.

36:47
You can click write your question in.

36:50
And then Kaitlyn, who runs that for us, will send it out to the agent, the Extension agent that is in your area.

36:58
So with that, I think I will open it up to any questions.

37:02
And I also want to encourage if we can have maybe a little bit, if there’s any farmers here today and they want to share their practices, maybe we can get a little bit of that discussion going today as well to hear what people have been trying on their farms.

37:13
I’m going to stop sharing so I can see everybody.

37:38
Thank you Ann for putting that in the chat.

37:42
And while people are thinking about their questions, I am going to launch a demographics poll here.

37:48
We do Madison Extension does receive federal funding.

37:52
So we are we are prior to ask that as part of our funding.

38:08
Do you have any farmers in the audience who might be willing to share some different practices they’re experimenting with and maybe it’s going well or maybe not going well, where they might have some sticking points?

38:22
I have a question about terminating cover crops and what are some ways, I know you chatted about it a little bit, but you know what are what are some ways that you’ve seen farmers use to terminate cover crops?

38:38
Yeah, I think it depends a little bit on like how much tillage you want to use.

38:43
Some people will actually just like till in those cover crops.

38:46
Some people who want to use more reduced tillage methods, you can do something like go through with a flail mower, cut it up into small pieces and then if you want, you can put a tarp over it for again, it does take about a couple weeks to help breakdown, but that will help it breakdown.

39:03
Something like winter rye, you need to be getting it at the right stage, the milk stage, and if you want, you can actually crimp it down to terminate it.

39:12
So you can use something like I’ve seen really just like basic setups with like a T post with like some posts or like some handles attached on it.

39:21
You can actually like walk on it and crimp it down and kill it that way, right, ’cause we want to break it, right?

39:27
Yes.

39:28
Are we going to have one of those available at one of our cover cropping soil health workshops this summer?

39:34
I can’t remember. Yes!

39:36
So Rue, who works for Extension has one of those just like really simple basic setups that you can just like walk on the rye, crimp it and break it that way.

39:45
So we can bring that out.

39:46
If you want to see like a really simple DIY like not expensive way to terminate something like a rye cover crop, especially if you’re on a small scale, it would be doable.

40:08
And you’re going to be sending out an e-mail afterwards with?

40:12
Yes, thank you, Ann.

40:15
Yes, I will send an e-mail out that will have this recording.

40:19
If you want to come back to it or share it with anybody, It will have links to the resources that Anne shared for us and a couple more resources.

40:27
There are some really great soil health tests you can send in soil samples if you want to take this a step further and UW has some resources about which ones are actually like research backed and are going to get at the goals that you’re trying to reach.

40:42
Good deal.

40:48
Well, I think you must have explained it well.

40:54
Well, if anybody does end up having any questions again, I can pop my e-mail on the chat since I know it’s not up on the screen anymore.

41:04
But don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions, and I hope to see some of you at field days this summer if you are in Wisconsin.