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A few years after Lindsey du Toit began her faculty position at Washington State University in 2000, a spinach seed farmer walked into her office and dropped a 5-gallon bucket of soil on her desk. He simply wanted to know if his spinach seed crop would thrive or die from Fusarium wilt if he planted a seed crop in that field the following spring.
With funding from the Sustainable Farms and Fields program, Four Elements Farm was able to improve soil health through compost applications.
Clay and Rachel, winners of the 2023 WaSHI Producer of the Year Award, are very thoughtful and intentional in the way they farm. Focusing on managing residue in ways that work for the land in the years to come and prioritize using a diverse crop rotation to improve crop yields and better manage soil nutrients and organic matter.
The name Aggregation carries metaphorical weight, as it describes the vital process of soil minerals and carbon-rich organic matter binding together with microbial webs and glues. These aggregates build soil structure, provide biodiversity habitat, and allow air and water to flow through soil. Aggregation encapsulated our event: a convergence of diverse elements aimed at nurturing growth, knowledge, and resilience.
In the ongoing quest to better understand and enhance soil health across Washington, the State of the Soils Assessment is in its fifth and final year of collecting soil samples. From 2020 to 2023, nearly 1000 soil samples were collected in over 60 crop types, led by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and Washington State University (WSU). These samples were collected with the help of over 300 farmers and 30 conservation districts (CDs). By the end of 2024, the soil archive will include over 1200 samples and management surveys, with soil collected from every county in Washington
Understanding soil data is crucial for making informed management decisions. However, soil health outcomes are determined by many variables, and the science surrounding soil health measurements is ever evolving. This makes it difficult to present soil data in an easy-to-understand way. Enter {soils}, a new R package developed to effectively visualize and describe soil health data.
We are pleased that Dr. Luis Reyes Rojas has joined the WaSHI team as of March 1 to work on the State of the Soils Assessment project. Luis is a soil pedologist with significant expertise in pedometrics (the use of statistical and mathematical approaches to understand why soils developed how and where they did)
2023 marked significant progress in soil health, including increased funding for soil health practice adoption and advancements in soil research. This trend was not exclusive to the broader field of soil health but extended to Washington Soil Health Initiative (WaSHI) projects.
Review some of the most read articles and most viewed videos about soil health from WaSHI.
Intercropping is frequently done in row crops, with two or more crops planted together. The Kesler’s have adopted the practice to improve their grass hay pasture. Intercropping benefits the soil by utilizing multiple species that provide different resources and nutrient demands and input than the main crop.
Members of the wine and juice grape community are heavily involved in this long-term research project, leading to collaborations with scientists, extension specialists, commercial wine and juice grape growers, crop advisors, viticulturists, vineyard managers, and others.