Soil Health and Management
Soil Testing – Support Next Season’s Success
Soil testing is a valuable tool for farmers and crofters planning for the next growing season. Understanding soil nutrient status, pH, and organic matter levels allows informed management decisions that can optimise crop performance while avoiding unnecessary input costs. Regular analysis can identify nutrient deficiencies or imbalances before they affect yield, supporting both productivity and…
Funding to Improve Soil Health
Healthy soils are fundamental to resilient and sustainable farming and crofting businesses. Improving soil health can increase nutrient cycling, enhance soil structure, improve water infiltration and retention, and support healthy crop and grass growth. These benefits can reduce input requirements, increase productivity, and strengthen resilience to extreme weather conditions. Improving soil health can deliver benefits…
The Journey of a Soil Sample
This publication focuses on one of the five key elements of the whole farm plan – soil analysis – and aims to explain the soil analysis procedures that take place in the laboratory. This publication has been produced in conjunction with a FAS video of the same name which you can watch below. Under the…
MMN January 2025 – Spring Sulphur Applications to Boost Grass Growth
Sulphur is an essential nutrient often overlooked by livestock farmers. It plays a vital role in nitrogen use efficiency and protein formation. Although light sandy soils are most vulnerable to sulphur losses, research suggests that deficiencies can also occur in heavy textured soils in early spring. The application of sulphur can boost dry matter yields…
What is ‘Rock Dust’ (Enhanced Weathering) and how it can Affect Soil Health and Carbon Sequestration
What is ‘rock dust’? Rock dust, or enhanced weathering (EW) mainly comprises igneous (volcanic) material rich in magnesium and calcium (essential for enhanced weathering), such as basalt, olivine and dunnite which are crushed to a powder for application to soils. Rock dust on soils – the concept Figure 1 outlines the concept of EW which…
Can Biostimulants be used to Support Soil Health?
There is a lot of discussion around managing soils to achieve ‘healthy soil’ status. Soil health indices comprises a mixture physical, chemical and biological parameters. There are many products on the market which promote potential benefits to soil health through the manipulation of the soil biology. What is soil health? The Food and Agriculture Organisation…
Can we store more carbon in our soils?
There is a lot of discussion around how we ‘lock up’ more carbon in our soils, however due to natural processes, this is more challenging than just applying more organic matter. The aim of this factsheet is to ‘go back to the basics’ to understand how carbon is stored in soils to provide further understanding…
CropCast – Soil Health: A View from Jim Wilson
In this episode Tiffany Stephenson is joined by Angus Farmer & Managing Director of Soil Essentials, Jim Wilson to discuss soil health and the types of tests arable farmers should be considering.
Understanding Soil Carbon
Soil comprises a mixture of mineral and organic material derived from the breakdown of parent material during soil formation and more recent additions of vegetation litter, dead roots, plant material and animal wastes. Therefore, soil organic matter (SOM) contains a range of nutrients including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and other nutrients, with SOM being…