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Comment by kaycebasques | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone here undergone a soil restoration project (big or small)? Did you happen to blog about the progress? There's so much I don't know, like how you even determine that your soil is degraded, or how you measure progress.

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My wife and I bought a farm in Oregon and we're in the process of doing exactly this. We don't have a blog yet – working on it - but we do have an instagram account if anyone's interested:

http://instagram.com/cleryfarm/

The previous owner had a soil test done, and through that we were able to assess how eroded it was (very). We switched the hay fields over to organic practices, but the biggest projects so far have been roughly 20 acres that we've put into conservation, including an oak woodland and an 'upland prairie' - both vanishing ecosystems in the state of Oregon.

Long term we're moving towards agroforestry practices, and thinking through the lens of carbon sequestration. In the short term, we've been heavily focused on brush removal, tree limbing, etc, for wildfire prevention and suppression.

Thanks for sharing. I followed your account. Looks like you're creating an idyllic life!

I'd really like to know more about your farm--specifics about acreage, crops, location, etc. There's contact info linked from my profile, or if you don't mind dropping your email here, I'd love to pick your brain!

Sorry for the late reply but DMs on the Instagram page are open if you ever wanted to reach out.

Get a shovel and dig a hole where there are some plants growing. You will see a darker layer (soil) on top of a lighter layer. The lighter layer is dirt (sand, silt, clay) without carbon in the form of life and carbohydrates. Progress is measured by the depth of the darker layer. The native prairie had a dark layer filled with roots 30 feet deep. To determine exactly how healthy your soil layer is you will need a microscope to survey the microbiota. If you dont have a microscope you can get an idea of how you are doing by observing how well the soil aggregates and is bound to roots. In healthy soil plants will have soil aggregates stuck to their roots that have to be manually removed. The aggregates are formed by glomalin produced by fungus and bacteria.

The more life you see in the soil the healthier it is. Predatory arthropods are a really good indicator. If they are around that means there is food for them.

To determine the quality of your soil, you can perform a soil test. In the US, you will most likely find your local university offering this service through their extension agency. It will probably cost around 30 dollars, and you will need to probe samples from different locations on the property. They will assess and give you results. Some of the metrics are: concentration of major nutrients, organic matter content, pH, and CEC (cation exchange capacity). You will also probably receive a list of recommendations.

In the US, your local National Resources Conservation Service office also provides this service. Costs $7 - $10.

Source: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb116...

Not on my own, but I spent some time working on a farm that had been working on soil restoration for roughly a decade. As time went on they had expanded the restoration efforts to new fields, What was awesome though was that they had soil cuts at each field so you could visually see the difference the years were making as the topsoil layer kept getting deeper and deeper.

My wife and I have been heavily influenced by Sepp Holzer, Elaine Ingham, Fukuoka Masanobu, and others in the permaculture/regen ag scene.

We bought a plot of land here in Arkansas a year and a half ago and have been working it, and plan to continue doing so with the aim of creating a self sustaining food forest and garden, one outcome of which will necessarily require healthy and strong soil. The ground is rocky and the rain runs off fast. We have been planting trees, bringing in leaf mulch, and leaving the cut grass when we mow.

There are a shockingly large number of techniques and things to know about this kind of work. Join some groups on Facebook or IRL, visit with farmers at your local farmers market, and search around and you will be able to get your hands on more info than you can handle.

My father is trying to do this on 17 acres of land in Mallorca, Spain. He hasn't been able to find anyone on the island who can do a soil carbon test, but there are ways of visually identifying water retention, insect and fungal life in the soil, etc. Here's his website and instagram if you're interested:

https://www.regencampos.es/

https://www.instagram.com/regencampos/

I am doing it on a small and unscientific scale. My soil is silty sand with a pretty neutral PH. I need to add quite a bit of organic material to get plants to thrive. In the past, I'd turn everything over with a shovel each year. This year I went to a no-till method for my annual crops putting down cardboard and woodchips as mulch. If a plant gives me an indication of a deficiency, I will address it. For example, sometimes my tomatoes need a little extra magnesium.

>For example, sometimes my tomatoes need a little extra magnesium.

How do you go about determining this? I just built a 400 sq. ft. greenhouse this year, and aside from watching the plants get bigger each day, I'm not really sure how to tell if I'm "doing it right".

Things like soil organic carbon (SoC) are commonly used measures of progress. Also things like humic acid and other secondary measures of biological can be used. No two patches of 'good' soil are the same, so there is some intuition involved

I try and blog a little bit about sustainable ag on thinkingagriculture.io as I work in ag research and am interested in how this meta evolves.

I've started a small market garden here on the far north coast of Scotland (https://www.instagram.com/burnlea.farm). Growing veggies for the local community, trees from local seed stock and this year I'm growing some old local varieties of barley (bere barley).

The soil on our croft is in a good way, having been left undisturbed for decades (aside from being cut for hay). However, we still need to build fertility and are doing so through compost, ramial woodchip and biodynamic preparations. This combined with a no-till (or minimum till) approach is helping to develop build soil and enhance soil structure. One issue we need to address with this is water management, as it can get very wet here (although we are a few weeks without rain now).

For keeping track of fertility in your soil a simple test that many people do is measure organic matter. This isn't something I've done yet. You can also do worm counts. And more detailed soil tests.

There are apps out there such as SoilMentor by Vidacycle that guide you in tracking this. Here's a good overview of their tests, which can be done by farmers on site with minimal equipment https://soils.vidacycle.com/soil-tests/

You can get a sense of the baseline when starting a project by doing this. But a good indicator would be looking at what plants are growing there already (if any) - weeds etc are indicators of soil characteristics. For example, compaction and drainage.

Personally I haven't taken any soil tests yet, I'm just keeping an eye on our crops and getting the sense of things that way. I'll take some tests at some point soon. Simple approaches to this can be pretty handy, for example I've been scything our 2 acre field and it allows me to step over each part of the field noticing how the vegetation changes species-wise and in vigor.

Supporting this, I'm also developing an app for market gardens to use for crop planning and record keeping. It's great to be your own customer, plus I'm tapping into a good network of established markets gardens here who are helping to shape the product.

I recommend anyone starting a project should read Mark Shepard's new book Water For Any Farm. His master line system, built upon PA Yeoman's keyline and scale of permanence is valuable, especially at an early stage. Equally valuable in dry climates as it is in wet ones.

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