Our approach to soil preparation for high water infiltration

Creating a deep living soil brings numerous benefits to our market garden, from boosting water infiltration to enhancing plant health. Here’s how we achieve record water infiltration in our beds, ensuring sustainable and profitable gardening practices.

The Importance of Deep Living Soil

Deep living soil is foundational for a thriving market garden. It facilitates:

• Enhanced Water Infiltration: Deep soils absorb and retain water more efficiently, crucial in climates with heavy rainfall.
• Healthier Root Systems: Plants develop deeper roots, increasing organic matter and improving overall plant health.
• Ease of Gardening: Transplanting, direct seeding, and weeding become easier with well-prepared beds.

The Role of the Broadfork

A key tool in small-scale market gardening is the broadfork. This tool is essential for creating deep soil in narrow beds, allowing for intensive planting. Originating from the French intensive market gardening technique, permanent beds are a hallmark of this method.

Introducing the Roebuck Fork

Over the past eight years, we’ve developed the Roebuck Fork, a revolutionary tool that allows us to work from the path without stepping on the beds. This minimizes soil compaction and disturbance.

The Roebuck Fork technique involves:

• Minimal Lifting: As demonstrated in our video, the tool requires very little lifting.
• Gentle Leveraging: The method of opening and lifting the soil with minimal disturbance makes the process comfortable and effective.

Benefits of Deep Living Soils

• Increased Organic Matter: Roots grow deeper, contributing to soil organic matter.
• Improved Water Infiltration: Essential in our heavy rainfall climate, this minimizes nutrient loss and retains moisture.
• Better Soil-to-Root Contact: This improves photosynthesis efficiency, indicated by healthy plant growth and “dreadlocks” – a term used in regenerative agriculture for root-soil contact.

Measuring Water Infiltration

To measure water infiltration in our beds:

1. Insert a 150 mm Pipe: Drive the pipe into the soil.
2. Pour the measured amount of Water: Fill the pipe with water above ground level.
3. Measure Time: 444 mm of water equates to 25 mm of rainfall within the pipe diameter. The time taken for water to soak in indicates how much rainfall your soil can handle.

Indicators of Soil Health

• Dirty Roots and Clean Worms: These are excellent indicators of soil health.
• Phenomenal Insights: For more information on soil health, check out the work of Nicole Masters from Integrity Soils.

By implementing these techniques, we have achieved record water infiltration, enhancing the sustainability and profitability of our market garden. Deep living soils not only improve water management but also contribute to a healthier and more productive garden.