An education in soil care – Agronomist & Arable Farmer

The Hutchinsons Healthy Soils assessment has identified some clear common denominators in the past seven years…

• The seeding zone of seedbeds tends to be overworked.
• Overworking leaves seedbeds at risk from slaking during heavy rain events.
• Slaking or capping of the seedbed creates an aerobic conditions in the seeded zone and severely impairs crop establishment.
• Poor infiltration of surface rainfall due to capping is incorrectly identified as poor drainage and addressed via deeper tillage passes.

Modern tillage machinery can create good seedbeds quickly, but problem grass weeds such as black-grass or ryegrass require delayed drilling to be practised for good cultural control.

The two elements of delayed drilling and early creation of finely worked seedbeds are rarely compatible, frequently leading to capped and anaerobic seedbeds.

The assessment of baseline issues and the farming requirements like grass weed control allows us to work with customers in addressing all issues beyond just having a focus on healthy soil or just achieving good weed control, a plan allows all elements to be positively affected at the same time.

Soil structure and the soil’s innate ability to maintain a resilient structure is a combination of factors, but understanding that soil moving implements never create good soil structure is both a major and key shift in understanding.

Good soil structure is created via natural processes, the building of aggregates by microbiology, binding of these together via growing roots and creation of burrows by worms, all together creating stable, resilient soil, with good gas exchange, water movement and storage.

Soil moving implements change this structure, and always in a negative way. However, farming soil damages soil and cultivation interventions are frequently needed to address problems such as compaction at depth, or shallow compaction.

Assessment of compaction depth is a vital component in good soil management – shallow compaction is not addressed appropriately by deep tillage. In all cases, tillage can be used and frequently should be used to remove a structural problem where identified, but tillage does not create good soil structure, natural processes do that, tillage only improves or removes a structural problem in the short term, long term the issue will return if other interventions are not used.

Deep tillage breaks up natural soil structures and produces a ‘soft’ loose structure which is easily recompacted via the passage of heavy machines during the farming year. There compacted soil is again deep tilled to alleviate the compaction facilitated by the original deep tillage. We have to break the cycle but doing that successfully requires a plan centred on an assessed baseline for your farm, a plan that transitions to an agreed approach, a plan that anticipates both the positives and potential negatives of the transition period, a long term plan that incorporates all the elements for resilient and healthy soil.

Vital elements

• Soil assessment
• Conduct a Gold test
• Utilisation of cover and catch crops
• Appropriate cultivation when required
• Understanding of chemical, biological and physical impacts on soil structure
• Initiating processes to cycle nutrients within the soil
• Never lose focus of growing strong and healthy cash crops.