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WE LOVE soil

Updated: Jan 9

JAN. 2026


We all love soils, and we all want to do better for our soils. As part of Be The Change project, we used a standardised approach to get a baseline for each farm’s soils. It was based on the technique that Liz G learnt during her CREATE course [1] with Nicole Masters in 2024.  


Trials on the Be The Change Farms

We wanted to get some useful information to help farmers make decisions or prioritise fields for action in the spring. There are options to set up trials during 2026, so we want to understand where the soils were at on each farm.  


The farmers identified three fields. For example, at Sarah’s farm one is a permanent pasture, one is a newly established herbal ley and the third had been direct drilled with winter barley. Then in October 2025, Liz G and Nic went exploring.  


Female farmer and her dog, prepare to carry out soil samples in a field.
Liz's soil testing kit and trusty sidekick

How did we collect the info? 

  • A spot was selected in the field, with the location recorded by What3Words.

  • A 50 metre surveyor's tape was laid out and a photo taken on its orientation to points in the landscape, e.g. trees, pylons. Along the tape, penetrometer readings[2] (9 readings at two depths over 50 metres), basal ground cover assessments* (at 100 points over 50 metres)[3], and forage tissue samples (used for Brix barometer[4]*) were collected.

  • At the 10 metre point of the tape, an infiltration ring was hit into the ground and infiltration rate[5]* was measured in minutes for the 1st and 2nd inch of water.

  • On the other side of the transect line at the 10 metre point, a soil pit was dug and was used to look at rooting depth (where 80% of the roots are)[6]*, nodulation of legumes[7]*, earthworm count[8]*, soil insect score[9]*, rhizosheaths[10]*, visual evaluation of soil structure[11] and topsoil depth[12].

  • The ones with * are part of regen platform of Soilmentor, with the other two of the ten indicators (carbon stocks (top 30 cm) and slake test) not being done. 


Soil collected from around the transect were sent off to SSM/Hutchinsons for full mineral analysis, and another to Soil Bio Analysis for soil food web analysis [13], with support from Re-Genus. 


What did we find? 

As you can imagine, there was lots of information gathered. Here are some of the joint areas of interest: 


Calcium  

We would have just focused on pH previously and just whacked some lime on. For Alan and Liz H, all their soils were under 6 for pH. However, there are high organic matter soils (varying between 11 and 16%), so it can be challenging to get these sorts of soils over pH 5.8. As they were detailed soil tests, the results showed the base cation saturation for calcium was slightly low (target is 65-68%, with Liz H’s soil varying from 47-52%, with Alan’s soil varying from 49-62%).  


Having the right balance of calcium in the soils can help the soil flocculate, which helps the soil structure, aeration and infiltration rates. For the fields at both Alan’s and Liz H’s the infiltration rate was slower than ideal and is an area of focus. Sometimes magnesium is to blame for tight soils, but for Alan and Liz H’s results the magnesium was slightly below target for base cation saturation (with a target of around 10-12% and results that varied from 7-9%).


The results show that all the soils contain enough calcium in reserves but are not available to the plant.


Healthy soil biology can help make calcium more available, so we will be exploring tweaks to their soil food web to get the soils working harder. 

In contrast, the soils at Sarah’s farm are good for pH (varying from 6.3 to 6.8), slightly lower for organic matter (9.5-11%) with high calcium base saturation (varying from 75-88%) and lower magnesium base saturation (varying from 3-7%). The infiltration was better in Sarah’s fields (varying between 4-7 minutes, which equate to 8.5-15 inches of rainfall per hour). 

 

Crop available phosphate 

In the more detailed soil test, they present information on crop available nutrients, both desired and found, and total in soil reserves. Eight of the nine fields tested had lower than desired crop availability phosphate. All nine fields had high soil reserves. If the traditional index system was looked at, the fields that weren’t at the desired level varied between Index 0-2. The more detailed test does provide more information to make different decisions on.  


The challenge with phosphate is that is highly reactive so it tends to bond with highly charged positive ions like iron. Once it is bound it is no longer available to the plant. The situation we are seeing on the Be The Change farms is very common. The next step is not to whack on some fertiliser and all will be well. You know us better than that. We need to understand what is happening in the soil, and what biological processes do we need to unlock to get the phosphate more available to really drive the performance on these soils. 


We need to focus on building up numbers of mycorrhizal fungi and phosphate solubilising bacteria, as they increase phosphate availability. A high population of all microbes will leave to more availability because as they die the phosphate is released in a plant available form.  


More diverse rooting systems, through more diverse swards, will access phosphate from different places within the soil profile. During the basal ground cover assessment, we count what we found every 50 cm – soil, forbs (herbs), litter, grass, legume or weeds. The fields at Liz H’s were 56-78% grass, with litter and weeds being next common. Alan’s showed between 54-69% grass, with litter and forbs being next common. At Sarah’s, the grass percentage varied between 69-83%, with litter and soils being the next common. This suggests we need to look at building up the diversity in their swards.  

 

 

High iron 

Alan and Liz H are in similar bits of the world, but Sarah is 150-200 miles south-east of them. However, all the fields sampled came back with high iron levels. The target given by the soil analysis company is between 18-189 mg/litre (mg/l) with Alan’s varying between 363-390 mg/l, Liz H’s between 401 and 543 mg/l and Sarah’s between 305 and 524 mg/l.  

Iron is essential for plants and animals. In plants, it is crucial for a range of pathways, including nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis as it is involved in the production of chlorophyll.  


The challenge is that iron can have an antagonistic effect on the availability of boron, cobalt, phosphorus, zinc, manganese, copper and calcium. Visible symptoms of high levels of iron are generally seen through it creating a deficiency in another nutrient, e.g, wilt, browning, or stunted roots and tops.  


When soils are high in iron, rhizosheaths become even more important. As stated on the Soilmentor website, rhizosheaths “are coatings of soil particles that cling to plant roots, making roots brown instead of white. They are a sign of biological/microbial activity in the root zone (rhizosphere). Soil particles are bound to the roots by biotic glues, secreted by microorganisms. This is aggregation in action and therefore indicates the formation of good soil structure.” When roots have rhizosheaths it is a small micro-climate that the plant and the microbes can create a more favourable nutrient balance, so it buffers the plant from the high iron soils.  


Rhizosheaths were looked at during the soil assessment, with roots scoring higher at Alan’s and Liz H’s. In the photo below, you can see soil starting to cling to the roots and root hairs. We would like to get to a situation where all the roots are covered in soil particles.  

 

From Alan’s baselining report
From Alan’s baselining report

Low trace elements 

Across all fields we sampled, we saw low boron and low iodine. In most of the fields, we saw low cobalt, copper and zinc. As indicated above, the high iron levels may be inducing some of these effects. Positively charged iron oxides are formed in the soils that strongly attracted negative charged ions, like iodine. For the positively charged ions, like boron, cobalt, copper and zinc, the iron oxides out-compete them for plant absorption and also bind with them to make them unavailable.  


We are particularly interested in addressing the boron levels as it is responsible for pumping sugars out of the roots to feed microbes and to build carbon levels in the soil. We can use Brix readings to monitor for boron, as the figures won’t change during the sunny bit of the day if boron is low. 


Most of the soils were higher than target for Molybdenum, which could be inducing copper and selenium deficiencies. 


As part of the project, we will be collecting information from the animals and the crops to see if the low levels of certain trace elements seen in the soil are causing problems. This will include their history of trace element supplementation.


It's worth thinking that the soil microbes are like your underground livestock, so the deficiencies that affect beef and sheep will also be affecting them.   

All the soils were above target for manganese, which is important for clover nodulation, and at appropriate levels for chloride. This test didn’t include selenium.  


Low fungi levels in soils  

Through the soil food web results, we can have a look and see what is happening with the microbes.  


In Alan’s fields we had two fields with slightly too high levels of bacteria and good levels of beneficial protozoa, but lower than ideal levels for fungi and no beneficial nematodes. One of this had some root feeding nematodes too. The third field had good level of bacteria and beneficial nematodes, but no protozoa and lower than ideal fungi levels. We also took a sample from a wood, and it had a good balance on microbes, so they are there but not in the grazing fields yet. 


At Liz H’s, all three field tests had higher than ideal bacteria levels but good protozoa levels, which predate on the bacteria. Root feeding nematodes were found at each field, with only one having beneficial nematodes (which predate on bacteria, protozoa and fungi). Two of the three had lower than ideal fungi levels. These tests show more diversity, but a bit of work is needed to get the balance better. 


Sarah’s results for the fields came back with only bacteria. Samples from a shrubby area and under a hedge had more diversity. This showed that fungi and protozoa are present under the hedge, but don’t like the middle of the field. We are doing more work to check the results and compare with other fields that have managed differently. 


Each of the farmers are aiming to have a visit by Daniel Iddon from Re-Genus to talk through the results in more details and to develop some trial plans to build up the microbes. 

 

Summary 

We already have so much to talk about for each farm from this one visit and assessment. This has just highlighted some common themes, which is intriguing due to the different locations, soil types and management.  


We are planning some seminars to focus on the detailed soil test, soil food web work and one to bring all the information together.  


Refs.

 

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