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Protecting soil aggregates key to soil health

A soil scientist says there’s a tradeoff when using tillage to control weeds and diseases.

Francisco Arriaga with the University of Wisconsin tells Brownfield unnecessary tilling can displace soil aggregates beneficial to plant health.  “Excessive aggregate disruption in the soil, it is detrimental to soil productivity because then you’re affecting that distribution of pore sizes in the soil, so it’s affecting your filtration.  It can lead to erosion, loss of nutrients, and all of this type of thing so try to be a good steward of the aggregates of your soil.”

He says aggregates create various sized pores that store what plants need.  “When we have sand and silt and clay interacting and forming these aggregates and held together by organic matter, you have spaces between those aggregates.  That’s what we call the macropores, large pores in the soil, and that’s what gives us that good ability for filtrating water into the soil, get that water in the soil,  and then also help drainage capacity of the soil.”

Arriaga says there is also a slight negative charge in subsoil water which helps hold nutrients for plant use.