Soils Map - Click to Enlarge
Monitoring The Soil
NRCS is helping collect and analyze the soils at this demo site. We will be analyzing the chemical, physical and biological changes in the soil per tillage treatment. We have installed soil moisture probes at 2" and 4" depths in each treatment. These probes take readings of the soil temperature every 4 hours year-round. This will tell us how the cover crop acres and tillage treatments effect the soil temperature.
Each fall we will be completing a soil assessment, per tillage treatment, along with collecting soils for lab analysis. We will be sending soils to two different labs for analysis.
1)Ward Labs to complete the Phospholipid Fatty Acid, Haney Test, and the Standard Soil Test
2)Cornell Labs for the Soil Health Analysis Package & Available Water Capacity Analysis
Our soil assessment will include earthworm count, infiltration, soil moisture, soil temperature, and penetrometer readings. These soil assessments will be completed three times per plot to give us an average.
It is important for us to share the data we collect so everyone can see how these soils react to the six different tillage treatments over five years. We will be presenting the results at our field day in July and on this website.
Below are the links to the data that was collected for the given year along with notes and pictures. If you would like more information on the soils data please don't hesitate to contact us.