Getting to Know Your Knolls Part 1: Understanding and Managing High pH Knolls

Jake Munroe, Soil Management Specialist – Field Crops, OMAFRA We’ve all seen them. Hilltops. Whitecaps. High spots where the crop struggles year after year. Eroded knolls are common to Ontario agriculture and cost farmers in lost productivity each season. However, not all eroded knolls are alike. In this two-part series, we will explore knolls: how […]

Read More…

Unraveling the Mystery of Soil: Manure’s Contribution

Christine Brown, Sustainability Specialist – Field Crops, OMAFRA “A radical new way of thinking about soil has partially solved the mystery of why adding manure improves resilience, climate control, and crop yields.” – Dr. Andy Neal, Rothamsted Research. Have you ever wondered why forests can establish and thrive without being fertilized? Or, why grasslands, pastures, […]

Read More…

Erosion Assessment Goes Geospatial

While managing soil microbes might be the newest frontier to improving soil health, one thing has not changed: you cannot improve soil you no longer have! Minimizing erosion is the first step in a soil health management plan. The old adage says: “you can only manage what you measure”, but actually measuring soil erosion is very complicated, even for experts in this field. There’s no need to measure Cesium isotopes along that slope in your field. What needs to be managed is the risk of erosion. […]

Read More…

Introducing PLATO, the Phosphorus Loss Assessment Tool for Ontario

rill erosion on a steeply sloped field

Keeping soil covered and minimizing erosion is a key principle of soil health. Maximizing the efficiency of crop nutrient uptake and minimizing losses are the foundation of 4R Nutrient Stewardship. When combined, these principles form the basis of a new online tool from OMAFRA called PLATO (Phosphorus Loss Assessment Tool for Ontario). PLATO is a calculator that you can use to estimate the risk of phosphorus loss on your farm. It’s part of the newly re-vamped AgriSuite and uses your specific soil, crop and nutrient application information to provide a risk rating and options to improve your score. […]

Read More…

What’s a Worm Worth?

The benefits of earthworms in agricultural soils and how to reap them Earthworms are the ecosystem engineers of the soil. In most terrestrial ecosystems they represent the most abundant belowground biomass1, and in the same way beavers create habitat for a host of other species to thrive, earthworms make the soil ecosystem work. They help […]

Read More…