Soil Health Minute: How healthy soil helps manage moisture

Using soil health building practices can help reduce standing water and move water into the soil after a rainfall event. In this Soil Health Minute, Abbey Wick visited two fields after a rain to show us a comparison of different management practices.

After a rain is a great time to see how soil health building practices can work for you.

So here I am in a long term no-till field, where we had an inch and a quarter of rainfall this morning. You'd think in this low part of the field that you'd see some standing water. However, all that water that fell this morning has now moved down these root channels and down old worm burrows into deeper in the soil profile.

So let's set up a comparison. Here on the right hand side is this field that we're in, this 20 years of no till with a diverse crop rotation. This is soil from another field just right next to us. It's conventional tillage. So after that inch and a quarter of moisture, you can see this field that we're in has excellent aggregation, breaks apart in my hands, with the large and small aggregates. You can also see that the worms between the aggregation and the worms, you get continuous soil pores from the surface all the way down into maybe three or four feet within the soil profile.

This neighboring field, you can see the platiness that's a result of compaction. The field was fairly wet when I walked into it, somewhat sticky, and you can just see how it's holding that moisture, because the moisture can't get down through these compacted layers, through these plates.

So using soil health building practices like no till and a diverse rotation can really help build up that soil so that water can move deep into that soil profile and be stored for later.