Soil Health in Practice: Field Indicators, Soil Biology & Management

Join us at Prora Farm for this workshop on soil health. The day will explore what soil health means in practice, and how we can assess and improve it by looking at the physical, biological, chemical and ecological characteristics of soil.

This event will include practical field observations and time with the microscope. Participants are encouraged to bring their own soil or compost samples to explore under the microscope lens!

Lunch will be provided. Follow the signs for parking on the site.

About the event

Facilitated by Jamie and Mary from Life to Lab, the workshop will combine practical field observation with a microscope session. We’ll spend the first part in the field, digging soil pits and looking at key indicators including geology, soil structure, organic matter, plant health and biodiversity. We’ll discuss what these observations can tell us about soil health, management and the wider ecology of the site.

The event farm site, Prora, is a 500 acre mixed farm which grows combinable crops established using direct drilling.

For the second part, we'll use a microscope connected to a screen to explore different soil and compost samples, including any samples brought by participants. We’ll consider key diagnostics and identify organism groups in the soil food web, discussing what their presence or absence can tell us about a sample, as well as how we can encourage greater biological diversity in our soils.

Throughout the workshop, we’ll discuss practical approaches to building soil health, alongside topics such as soil testing, plant nutrition and management practices.

If you’d like to bring a soil sample, we recommend taking a small sample from around 10cm depth, preferably from near the root zone of plants. However, please bear in mind that we may not have time to look at everyone’s samples!

If weather is really bad, we will pre-dig a few soil pits and bring them inside to explore.

Photos will be taken at this event. If you do not want your photo take, please let us know on the day.

If you have any questions, please email: tess@eastlothianclimatehub.org