The 4 Core Principles

4 Core Principles

Resources

While soils are complex, taking care of it can be simple. We follow four core principles of soil health:

1. Keep the Soil Covered

With living plants, plant residue, straw, or mulch: it's the first step in protecting soil from erosion by water and wind, but soil cover also buffers soil temperature, slows rainfall runoff, and aids rainfall infiltration. Cover crops are our friends and allies.

2. Minimize Soil Disturbance

Both physical and chemical. This proactive measure can heal and protect properties of the soil (i.e., pore space, aggregate stability), and ultimately enhance the soil's biological life.

3. Maximize Living Roots

Longer throughout the year to fuel biological activity, to improve soil structure, and provide a continuous form of food like sugars and carbohydrates in the root zone for plant growth.

4. Energize with Diversity

Use different crop species and families and integrate livestock where possible for specific purposes to enhance chemical, physical and/or biological aspects of the soil. It improves the resilience of the whole system.

Learn more about the four principles:

Finding Common values and ground from the soil up

Principle 4: Energize with Diversity

Principle 3: Maximize Living Roots

Principle 2: Minimize Soil Disturbance

Principle 1: Keep the Soil Covered

There are many ways to apply the four principles:

Maximize Living Roots: This wheat field on the Myers Charolais Farm in Clear Springs, Maryland builds a strong root system to support healthy soil structure. Photo by Gavin Myers.

Keeping soil in place and preventing soil movement from the field and landscape is essential to building soil health and maintaining productivity. Soil that erodes from rain or wind results in nutrient loss, diminished growing potential, and other off-site environmental impacts such as soil in roads and sedimentation of local waterways. Keeping soil covered and armored can prevent and eliminate erosion.

Soil organic matter is a source of carbon and other essential nutrients. soil organic matter affects many soil properties and is made up of plant and animal residues and amendments added to the soil. Soil is a living ecosystem that experiences gains and losses of soil organic matter. Farmers, gardeners, and soil managers should minimize losses that can occur when soil is disturbed or left bare and build organic matter through management of plants, cropping rotations, integration of livestock, and the addition of plant nutrients, and soil amendments such as compost, manure, and fertilizers.

Soil is a living system with biological, chemical, and physical properties. Some properties are inherent to the soil type and how the soil was formed but all of the properties can be affected by management or neglect. Thinking of soil as an ecosystem with various parts and players can help soil managers understand all soil change processes are integrated and interactive and shortcuts in decision-making may be shortsighted and short-change the system in the long run.

Adaptive Challenges - A Soil, Conservation, and Place Supplement

A Grass-Roots Movement For Healthy Soil Spreads Among Farmers

USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service – The Science of Soil Health video series

Benefits of No-till Farming

Changing The Way We Think About Soil Microbes

Compaction

Cycle, Re-cycle, Repeat

Discover the Cover

Dynamic Cropping Systems

Fighting Plant Disease with Microbes

Flail Mowing Cover Crops at Potomac Vegetable Farms

Getting a Handle on Mineralizable N in Soils

Growing Money and Soil at Potomac Vegetable Farms

Hay Mulch for Vegetables and Soil at Potomac Vegetable Farms

How Healthy Soil Should Look

Intensive Composting at Potomac Vegetable Farms

Natural Systems and Weeds

Nature's Way of Extracting Minerals from Soil

Nightcrawlers and Soil Water Flow

Overseeding Cover Crops into Fall Vegetables at Potomac Vegetable Farms

Soil Feeds Plants, and Vice Versa

Soil Spading for Gentle Tillage at Potomac Vegetable Farms

Soil Stability Test

Systems in Agroecology

Understanding the Value of Legumes and Nitrogen-Fixing Microbes

Using Cover Crops to Soak up Nutrients for the Next Crop

Using Insects to Manage Pests

The “Vacation Year” Cover Crop Rotation at Potomac Vegetable Farms

What Happens When You Till?

Without Carrot or Stick

USDA-NRCS East National Technology Support Team. 2012. Under Cover Farmers - Featured Length

Brown, G. 2014. Grazing Cover Crops and Benefits for Livestock Operations. Presentation at the USDA-SARE National Conference on Cover Crops and Soil Health.

Organic No-Till Farming - This video features Dr. Kathleen Delate of Iowa State University with funding from USDA-NIFA, USDA Agricultural Research Service, The Rodale Institute, The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and CERES.

USDA NRCS Webinar Portal

Starting with Soil at Waterpenny Farm

No-Till Vegetable Experiments at Fauquier Education Farm

Fine-Tuning Fertility at Potomac Vegetable Farms

Experiments with No-Till Cover Crops at Potomac Vegetable Farms

And don't forget the 5 priorities of soil health management

5 Soil Health Priorities

Visit our local technical assistance partners to learn more:

Technical Assistance

Depending on your needs and interest in technical and educational assistance, there are a number of Coalition partners at the federal, state, and local levels that can provide assistance and guidance on a wide range of agriculture, natural resources, land management, and conservation planning topics. The interactive map below provides addresses and contact information so you can learn more about their services and technical assistance.

Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) is a federal agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that provides technical assistance and conservation planning to farmers, ranchers, and other private landowners and managers wanting to improve and protect natural resources on their farms or land

Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) are political subdivisions of the state and work closely with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) to develop comprehensive programs and plans to conserve soil resources, control and prevent soil erosion, prevent floods, and conserve, develop, utilize and dispose of water at a county or multi-county basis.

Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE), a partnership of Virginia Tech and Virginia State University, provides resources and educational outreach to the Commonwealth of Virginia’s more than seven million residents in the areas of agriculture and natural resources, family and consumer sciences, community viability, and 4-H youth development.

Virginia Tech Agriculture Research and Extension Centers (ARECs), as part of Virginia's Agriculture Experiment Station system, conduct research on food and fiber systems, their impact on the environment, and their relation to the future needs of Virginia, the nation, and the world.