IMPROVED SOIL STRUCTURE

Its so important we restore damaged soil structure!

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Soil Structure is Vital...

Important Roles of Soil Structure:

Soil structure determines movement of nutrients, water, air and life within the soil.

Poor soil structure leads to rain not soaking in well leading to potential erosion.
Too little soil moisture leads to poor growth and plants can die.
Too much water from poor water movement can suffocate plants which roots need to breath.
Nutrients and soil life that are restricted in movement because of poor soil structure will also limit growth.
Plant roots can not spread evenly or reach deeper into the soil, leading to plant instability and poor uptake of nutrients.

A Big Problem Today...

Unfortunately soil structure damage is very common today due to poor farming management techniques.
These techniques have come about as man has moved away from working with nature and adopted his own ideas. Yet nature has existed for many millions of years and plants flourished everywhere.
Our farmlands are now struggling, we need to get back in harmony with nature by reducing synthetic chemical use, excessive digging, removal of organic matter and lack of diversity.

Top soil washed away due to poor soil structure is an important natural resources lost, never to return.

It also causes a problem downstream with rivers silting up, marine life dying and more serve and regular flooding events.

CASE STUDY: Davao City Region, Philippines;

Recent flooding downstream in the city areas is largely a result of farm soils loosing their ability to soak up heavy rains due to their soil structure being damaged. Opening the soil structure through the application of GROWERS GOLD could go a long way to help with this issue.

Davao Catchment: Erosion is a blocking our rivers and killing their life.

Davao River: Millions of tonnes of soil going out to sea.

Testing Your Soil Structure

This is an easy test to do and an important indicator of true soil health:

Slowly insert a metal rod down into the soil and feel the resistance as you go deeper.
Where there is an increased level of resistance, this indicates increased soil hardness and hard-panned soil structure.
The depth indicates how much usable soil is available to plants.
Test in many places to get an overall sense of your soil structure health.
Apply GROWERS GOLD to fix the very common problem of poor soil structure.

Test Soil Structure with a smooth metal rod and where there is greater resistance.

The photo above shows an excavation of soil near a tree showing its root distribution as severely restricted to above the yellow line only due to very poor soil structure not allowing the roots to penetrate more deeply.

Poor farming methods lead to rich fertile forest soil turn hard and lifeless with very poor soil structure within 17 years.

Soil Organic Matter (SOM) dropped from 4.3% down to 1.6% which is a drop of 2.7%.
Because SOM is important for water storage capacity in soils, this drop accounts to 16.2 litres per square metre loss of water storage capacity or 162,000 litres per hectare.
The loss in SOM is also equivalent to at least 270,000 pesos worth of nutrition lost per hectare or 27 pesos per square meter.

Improving soil hydrology will help stop erosion/flooding issues...

All growers can improve their soil hydrology by re-introducing healthy soil biology with GROWERS GOLD. The soil biology work to open up soil structures naturally and efficiently without any side-effects. In conjunction keep as much organic matter on your soil surface as possible to help feed the soil biology and protect the soil from the weather and weeds etc. As organic matter enters the soil through the action of the soil life, your soil will steadily increase in Soil Organic Matter (SOM) too. SOM also helps with soil structure, not to mention added nutrients and soil water holding capacity.

Soil structure test showing the difference between damaged soil structure and healthy soil structure with water infiltration and runoff/erosion.

This explains why so many of our rivers are silted up with top soils and our farm soils are now so unhealthy.

GROWERS GOLD can help repair soil structure quickly.

Another great soil test showing the differences between healthy and unhealthy soil.

Microbial soil life plays an important role clumping soil together to build soil structure. Soil structure is critical for good plant health and performance.

GROWERS GOLD helps restore soil structure quickly.

Explanation of the difference between good and poor soil structures.

Good soil structure is critical for healthy growing and healthy plants.

GROWERS GOLD can help repair soil structure quickly.

(Thanks go to USDA-NRCS for these demos. )

Poor soil health is indicated strongly by poor soil structure. In the above photo, the root depth is shown to be over double in the soil with better soil structure. Soils with poor soil structure experience a wide range of growing issues. GROWERS GOLD helps restore soil health and structure leading to much healthy plant growth and more income for the grower. [Photo Above]