National Allotments Week: Nature-friendly soil solutions
8th August 2023
Soil is the vital support system for life both above and below ground. This year’s National Allotments Week highlights the benefits of caring for our soil and the creatures that inhabit it. In this blog, our Project Manager, Vanessa Moore, shares her experiences with Earthwatch’s new Soil Health Kit as well as her top tips on creating a nature-friendly allotment plot.
Earthworms are a natural indicator of good soil health
Why does soil matter?
A ground-breaking new study has found that soil “is likely to be home to 59% of life including everything from microbes to mammals, making it the singular most biodiverse habitat on Earth” (7 August 2023, PNAS journal).
Soils are essential for all life-sustaining processes on our planet. They support biodiversity, clean water, help with climate regulation and so much more – and yet they are being degraded at an alarming rate. A recent assessment for Europe suggested that 60-70% of soils are unhealthy due factors including pollution, excess nutrients, compaction and soil degradation.
Soil is the vital support system for life both above and below ground which is why it’s critical that it is in good condition, whether you’re nurturing your very first bean plant in your back garden or managing a farm that’s producing food for the nation. The importance of increasing soil health awareness has also been recognised as part of this year’s National Allotments Week.
A farmer in the Netherlands using the new Soil Health Kit developed by Earthwatch Europe
Earthwatch Europe’s Soil Health Kit
Earlier in 2023, we were proud to launch our new Soil Health Kit in the Netherlands. Providing a selection of easy citizen science tools, it was developed with farmers in mind who would like to assess and monitor the soil health of their land. The engagement and training in local Soil Health research projects will benefit farmers, researchers, monitoring agencies and policymakers. Governments, companies and institutions will use the project’s findings to support better decision-making processes about the use of our precious soil resources.
A special opportunity to test the Soil Health Kit
As an Earthwatch staff member (by day) and enthusiastic allotmenteer (virtually all other times), I have been closely following the development of the new Soil Health Kit and was delighted to be offered the chance to help out with the prototyping stage.
With almost perfect timing, the test kit was ready at exactly the moment when my partner and I expanded from a half plot to a full plot, taking over the adjacent piece of land that had sadly been neglected for several years. Most of the area had been smothered under an unbreathable plastic covering. What would the soil be like? Would it be workable? Would anything ever be able to grow there again? What a great opportunity then to test out the Soil Health Kit and see what it could tell us!
Colour chart included in the Soil Health Kit
Putting theory into practice
With the Soil Health Kit, farmers can perform five different tests that will provide insights about their soil type, soil structure, and the organic matter content. It also helps with monitoring biodiversity and vegetation levels. My partner and I set out to apply the same methodology to our allotment plot.
We peeled back the plastic to find something a little similar, I imagine, to the surface of the moon – it was rock solid and desolate. Working through the test, we found we had a smooth clay with almost non-existent infiltration capability. There are some benefits to having clay as it retains nutrients well, but in its heavily compacted state it would be very difficult for roots to grow and even more difficult for water to reach them. There was no vegetation and almost no ground life. We could find only a few very small soil-feeding worms in the very top layer of the earth.
Fast forward three months – and an awful lot of hard work – and we were ready to do the test again. Had we made any improvements? Thankfully, yes! The most noticeable change was the faster infiltration rate of the soil, the structure was looser and water was draining freely. The improved soil was supporting much more life – an abundance of different earthworms and ground dwellers and full vegetation cover. The Soil Health Kit had helped us to understand the extent of our challenges and, whilst there are many factors influencing soil health that we can’t change, we were inspired to put the work in to aerate and enrich the earth.
Using the Soil Health Kit on an allotment vegetable patch (left: before, right: after)
Soil solutions that can make a real difference
So what can you do to improve your soil? While the methods for improving soil health on an arable farm can be quite different to those for a community allotment, the approach and the ethos should be the same – be good to nature and nature will be good to you. There are no plants that grow alone, they are all a part of complex ecosystems. So often in gardening we seek to control these systems, but nature has controls of its own in place. Working with nature is always better than working against it.
If you would like to be more nature-friendly (and save money!) on your allotment, here are some of the ideas you might like to try:
Home-made fertilisers made from nettles and comfrey (left). Using eggshells (right).
1. Make your own fertilisers and supplements
Our allotment is completely organic, we have never used any chemical products – they’re not necessary. It’s easy to make your own liquid fertilisers by steeping nettles and comfrey in buckets of water. There are also lots of other ways to put specific nutrients into your soil if needed, for example, baked eggshells are a great way of getting some extra calcium into your soil and (supposedly!) keeping slugs at bay.
2. Compost everything
All living plants are full of nutrients. By composting them down or using them as mulch, you can keep all those nutrients for your future crops. Even ‘weeds’ can have value! You won’t want them in your compost heap as they may regrow and spread, but if you can keep them contained they can still make great growing material.
Crop rotation prevents the soil from nutrient depletion
3. Rotate your crops
It’s traditionally the first rule that you learn, but it can be surprising how many people don’t do this. Different plants take different nutrients from the soil, so rotating your crops stops the soil becoming depleted in any particular type of nutrient.
4. Use green manures
As well as not taking too many nutrients out, it’s important to put them back in. In addition to animal manure, green manures like lambs lettuce and buckwheat – which can be grown and dug back in while your beds are empty – are a great way of keeping the soil alive and actively replenishing nutrient levels.
Borage is a great plant for pollinators
5. Provide plants for pollinators
We specifically grow pollinator-friendly plants to ensure that the insects we need for the pollination of our fruits and vegetables can be supported for as long as possible. We grow patches of borage, let mint and herbs go to seed, and allow poppies, primroses and other flowering plants to take up root wherever they want. Discover more actions you can take for wildlife as part of our Naturehood programme.
6. Embrace the overgrowth
There are some invasive plants, like bindweed and horsetail, which are helpful to remove, but if a plant is not doing any harm then there’s probably no harm in letting it grow. Not only is this a great way to get useful plants – like nettles and comfrey – but the ground cover can stop the soil drying out in heatwaves and it helps to keep a lively healthy ecosystem alive, providing habitat for ground-dwellers who will actually help keep pests under control.
Choosing a more nature-friendly approach to growing fruit and vegetables will be rewarded!
7. Learn to share
Not everything goes to plan, it never does for any gardener, and if you expect to get 100% of your produce 100% of the time you’re going to be permanently disappointed. If we can learn to live in balance with other living things, we will reap the benefits in the long-run.
Find out more about the Soil Health Kit developed by Earthwatch Europe. Read more about nature-friendly allotment tips on the website of the Soil Association.