| 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. |