How long does it take to improve soil ? - Polyculture Market Garden Study

One of the things I love most about the way we grow is how each year everything seems to improve -  richer biodiversity, more and tastier produce and healthier soils.

We've been monitoring what effect our cultivation practices have on the soil to see whether our observations are confirmed by testing. We take two soil samples from our gardens, one in March before fertilising and another in November after the last crops are harvested.

We started the market garden in March 2015.  The results below represent the first and second soil tests in the garden and results from samples taken in March of this year.

Soil Mineral Analysis and pH   

	2015
March	pH (KCI)	N03N	NH4N	P205	K20
	5.69	15.4	2.89	16.3	13
November	pH (KCI)	N03N	NH4N	P205	K20
	6.44	16.2	4.45	43.9	14.4
	2016
		Nitrogen mg/kg		Potassium and Phosphorous mg/100g
March	pH (KCI)	N03N	NH4N	P205	K20
	6.65	4.43	5.79	88	25.2

It's pleasing to see our market garden soils improving after the first year of cultivation and that's with taking out 358 kg of produce last year (see here for a summary of all results).

Also interesting to see is the reduction in plant available N (N03N) from Nov- March, probably due to high levels of carbon rich straw mulch left over after the growing season. The soil microbiota will be using the nitrogen to break down the high carbon straw.

Soil Health Visual Testing 

As well as the laboratory analysis of our soils we also take visual tests using a soil health test developed by farmers for farmers to track the development of soil health. These test show great improvements in the soil over a period of just 13 months.

 Polyculture Study team carrying out soil heath test in the market garden.

Soil Test Card comparison 2015 vs 2016 

2016	TEST	RESULT			TEST SCORES 1 - 9
		POOR 1 --------- 2 --------- 3	FAIR 4 --------- 5 -------- 6	GOOD 7 ---------- 8 --------- 9	1	2	3	4	5	Av
	1.GROUND COVER	Less than 50% ground cover [ground plants or mulch	50% to 75% ground cover [ground plant or mulch]	more than 75% ground cover [ground plant or mulch]	9	9	9	9	9	9
	2.PENETROMETER	Wire probe will not penetrate	Wire probe penetrates with difficulty to less than 20 cm	Wire probe easily penetrates to 20 cm	9	4,5	9	5,5	5,5	6.7
	3.INFILTRATION	More than 7 minutes	3 to 7 minutes	Less than 3 minutes	9	9	9	9	9	9
	4. DIVERSITY OF MACROLIFE	Fewer than two types of soil animals	Two to five types of soil animals	More than five types of soil animals	9	9	7	9	9	8.6
	5. ROOT DEVELOPMENT	Few fine roots only found near the surface	Some fine roots mostly near the surface	Many fine roots throughout	9	7	7	8	8	7.9
	6. SOIL STRUCTURE	Mostly in clods or with a surface crust, few crumbs	Some clods but also many 10mm crumbs	Friable, readily breaks into 10mm crumbs	6	5	6	4	6	5.4
	7. AGGREGATE STABILITY	Aggregate broke apart in less than one minute	Aggregate remained intact after one minute	Aggregate remained intact after swirling
		10cm depth			8	9	8	8	8	8.2
		20 cm depth			not taken	not taken	not taken	not taken	not taken	not taken
	8. EARTHWORMS				2	4	1	9	5	4.1
									Total	58.9
2015	TEST	RESULT			TEST SCORES 1 - 9
		POOR 1 --------- 2 --------- 3	FAIR 4 --------- 5 -------- 6	GOOD 7 ---------- 8 --------- 9	1	2	3	4	5	Av
	1.GROUND COVER	Less than 50% ground cover [ground plants or mulch	50% to 75% ground cover [ground plant or mulch]	more than 75% ground cover [ground plant or mulch]	8	6	7	7	7	7
	2.PENETROMETER	Wire probe will not penetrate	Wire probe penetrates with difficulty to less than 20 cm	Wire probe easily penetrates to 20 cm	6	4	4	3	3	4
	3.INFILTRATION	More than 7 minutes	3 to 7 minutes	Less than 3 minutes	4	1	1	1	1	1.6
	4. DIVERSITY OF MACROLIFE	Fewer than two types of soil animals	Two to five types of soil animals	More than five types of soil animals	1	1	1	1	1	1
	5. ROOT DEVELOPMENT	Few fine roots only found near the surface	Some fine roots mostly near the surface	Many fine roots throughout	4	6	6	5	5	5.2
	6. SOIL STRUCTURE	Mostly in clods or with a surface crust, few crumbs	Some clods but also many 10mm crumbs	Friable, readily breaks into 10mm crumbs	5	4	6	4	5	4.8
	7. AGGREGATE STABILITY	Aggregate broke apart in less than one minute	Aggregate remained intact after one minute	Aggregate remained intact after swirling
		10cm depth			4	5	3	7	8	5.4
		20 cm depth			7	7	8	8	6	7.2
	8. EARTHWORMS				0	5	5	3	3	3.2
									Total	39.4

See here for the results of our polyculture studies from 2014 - 2016

Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course 

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References 

1. This soil health card was developed as part of the Good Soil Project and the Good Worm Project, initiatives of Tuckombil Landcare Inc. in partnership with NSW DPI (then NSW Agriculture) and the Natural Heritage Trust. You can download the card here.
2. Our samples our analysed by   The Ministry of Agriculture and Food