When Kenny Blin steps on a shovel to turn up some soil in his hayfield, he doesn’t have to stomp. The soil is loose enough that the shovel slides right in. That’s one sign of a healthy soil, says Jay Jordan, natural resources technician with the Stark Soil and Water Conservation District.

Blin’s soil was chosen as the winner this year in the Stark SWCD healthiest soil contest. The contest is meant to encourage farmers to consider the health of their soils and to get them thinking about it as a living ecosystem, Jordan explains.

The entries were judged using five indicators of soil health: smell, structure, organic content, water infiltration and slaking, which is the breakdown of soil aggregates when the soil is immersed in water.  Farmers can use those same factors to assess their own soil in the field, Jordan says.

Blin’s soil sample scored well in each of the categories, but the infiltration results were especially impressive, Jordan says. The wormholes and root channels in the soil allowed the water to infiltrate quickly, and then the organic matter in the soil helped hold the moisture, rather than allowing it to drain straight through. “It was like a sponge," Jordan says.

Taking a close look at your soil gives you a better understanding of how your farming practices are affecting your soil, Blin points out. Farming practices have changed considerably since he started farming more than 60 years ago. “We had to plow everything,” he recalls.

He milked cows on his farm near Louisville, Ohio, for 50 years, and he has continued raising corn, soybeans, wheat and hay since he quit milking several years ago. Over the years, he has adapted his farming practices to include conservation practices such as no-till and cover crops.

He likes keeping up with new ideas for taking care of his soils, and he’s still working to improve, he says. “Keep learning, that’s the name of the game," Blin says.

For the contest, Blin picked a field he knew would do well. “We picked an alfalfa field that hadn’t been tilled in quite a while,” he says. Not all of his ground is that good, he admits. He has some areas of the farm where excavation for oil wells has hurt drainage and soil quality.

His rolling terrain also can lead to erosion in spots if he isn’t careful, he adds. “I’ve got areas I’m fighting all the time.”

Adjust as needed

It’s important to keep an eye on problem areas and to adjust management as conditions change, Blin says. For instance, a few years ago he started using Y-drops to apply sidedress nitrogen when soils were wet to avoid leaving open trenches. For dry soils, he prefers knifing in the nitrogen to get it down near the root zone.

Blin farms about 250 acres using various crop rotations and cover crops. One field located next to a road intersection is always in a soybean-wheat rotation with cover crops in between. He avoids growing corn there because a tall crop would block visibility at the intersection, causing a driving hazard, he explains.

Generally, he raises about twice as many soybean acres as corn acres. His wheat acres usually are about half his corn acres, and he also has some land in hay.

After wheat, Blin likes to plant cover crop mixes before going back the following spring with soybeans. He’s had good success with a mix of ryegrass, radishes, crimson clover and rape. Sometimes he mixes in sunflowers and leftover soybeans, as well.

The radishes and rape freeze out over the winter, then the clover does most of its growing in the spring, he explains. The ryegrass seems to provide good cover everywhere, he adds. “I’m really impressed with the ryegrass, especially on wet ground," Blin says.

Blin also uses cereal rye as a cover crop in some fields. He has had good results no-tilling soybeans into a green cereal rye cover crop 3 or 4 feet tall, and then spraying the rye afterward.

Soil assessment

To collect samples for the contest, Jordan cut 6-inch PVC pipe into pieces about 7 inches long and then beveled one of the cut edges on each piece. To collect a sample, the beveled edge of the PVC was hammered into the soil about 6 inches.

Then contestants cut around and under the PVC rings with a shovel to pick up the samples within the PVC rings. That kept the soil samples intact for the competition.

For the smell test, judges were looking for a pleasant earthy smell, as opposed to a sour odor indicating oxygen is not circulating into the soil, Jordan explains. To assess soil structure, they looked for soils that broke apart easily into smaller peds, instead of just crumbling to dust or holding together in compacted clods.

To assess organic content, they looked for root matter, wormholes and other signs of living things such as microbes and fungi in the soil.

Slaking was tested using a sample of soil in a small sieve, immersed in water. Healthier soils resist slaking, and soil aggregates hold together when they are immersed.

To test infiltration, judges simulated a 1-inch rainfall by pouring water over each sample of soil within its PVC ring. They timed how long it took for the water to soak through the samples. Healthier soils allow quicker infiltration, so water is less likely to run off the surface.