Soil Organic Matter

What is Soil organic matter?
How important is soil organic matter to your soil?
Learn how to feed your soil with organic matter & improve soil health to a point were your plants are healthy.

Organic matter

Organic matter is a key ingredient in the soil. You need an organic matter content of more then 10% (you can find this out by doing a simple soil test) to have a lot activity in your soil.

Organic matter helps with compaction, aeration & retention of moisture. Most importantly it feeds the soil.

Some examples of Organic matter are mulches, decaying plant material & compost.

TIPs!!

Organic matter can be added to the soil by growing a green manure crop (such as vetch, clover, cow peas) or good compost. For best results you should turn them into the soil. This gets the organic matter down into the soil, away from harmful sunlight. Ready for the soil organism & worms to start breaking down the organic matter further & making nutrients available to plants.

When you are preparing the ground for a new crop, it is a good practice to grow 3 green manure crops in a row before you plant the ground or paddock out to your desired crop. Each time you grow a green manure crop be shore to turn it back into the soil. All green manure crops are a very good source of organic matter. As an added bonus they produce a natural form of nitrogen. There is no better form of organic matter then green manure crops.

If you are going to add compost as an organic matter source it is a good idea to get it tested for biological activity. The more activity that the compost holds the higher quality the compost is.

When it comes to organic production, the activity in your soil is the most important part of organic farming. By adding organic matter to the soil before you grow a crop and continually through out the life of the crop, it will in hence the soil activity, which inturn will help with plant health and Keep disease and pest at bay.

If you are unable to turn the compost into the soil then you are best to cover the compost with mulch, .this will help to keep the micro-organism that are found in compost alive. Also you will be getting to great sources of organic matter into the soil at once. Sunlight is harmful to organism. They can not live in sunlight. They are found under the surface away from the harsh environment.

Other good sources of organic matter are humic acid and Rock mineral fertilizers. A good practice is after adding organic matter to the soil, is to apply a biological Stimate food source over ground or put through your irrigation system. Some kelp, fish & humic acid products help to stimulate the organism that in the soil, plus the ones that you just added.