Soil Health Assessment & Plan Ground Truthing Project

Building a robust Ontario Soil Health Database, Together

Soil health refers to the soil’s ability “to support crop growth without becoming degraded or otherwise harming the environment” (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada). It is typically evaluated by examining chemical, physical, and biological properties that serve as indicators of how well the soil functions. With repeated measurements, farm managers can track changes in soil health over time. Changes in soil health associated with implementing soil health-building typically occur over many years.

Want to monitor your orchard/vineyard’s soil health for FREE? Then consider participating in the Soils At Guelph SHAP Ground Truthing Project. SHAP is OMAFRA’s made-in-Ontario tool for Soil Health Assessment and Planning. More info on SHAP Framework. Soils At Guelph is working together with OMAFRA and others in the province to build a robust SHAP database with Ontario agricultural lands.

Getting involved

Participating in the project means you will qualify for FREE soil health analysis for your orchard/vineyard. The SHAP Ground Truthing Project analysis includes organic matter, aggregate stability, active carbon, respiration and potentially mineralizable nitrogen. In addition they will also pay for soil texture analysis, a standard fertility package (pH, CEC, K, P, Ca, Mg), and organic carbon and total nitrogen.

Growers that are interested in participating in the project, will need to collect soil samples in late spring (June), and the samples should be collected from under the tree or vine row. The program will provide 1 FREE sample per unique vineyard/orchard location, additional samples may be collected for comparison but would be paid for by Grower. Growers are also required to keep samples cool and ship to the Agri-Food Lab in Guelph. Co-operating growers will be asked to fill out a survey about their production practices in their orchard/vineyard.

Your identity remains anonymous. Lab results are sent directly to the email address associated with the lab submission form and copied to Soils at Guelph. They feed the results into the provincial database anonymously to help OMAFRA and Soils at Guelph refine the Soil Health scoring functions, and possibly in future have specific scoring by cropping system. You will receive a report which summarizes your results and benchmarks them against samples collected in similar soil textures (across all crop types). These results will help collaborators, OMAFRA and researchers to develop management plans focused on improving soil health. Expect that analysis & benchmarking will take much longer than traditional fertility sampling –final report to be delivered following crop harvest.

Participation Steps – More detail at this LINK:

REGISTER: To register for the SHAP Ground Truthing Project, simply send an email to soils@uoguelph.ca. Tell them the # of orchards/vineyards/fields you’d like to sample and your county/district. In response, they’ll send you an email with information about how to participate. Free analysis will only apply to one sample per field location. This is a first-come-first-serve offer with limited # of free samples.

MANAGEMENT HISTORY SURVEY: Following Registration you will be sent a link to complete the Management History Survey. The survey will ask for a 4 year management history of the orchard/vineyard/field being sampled (which is essential for our data interpretation and for the SHAP scoring report). It takes about 10 minutes for each field being sampled. The survey questions are not specific to orchards/vineyards, so it is important to consider all questions from the perspective of under-vine or tree row management.

SAMPLE COLLECTION: Utilize the ground truthing app to create a georeferenced location for the sample collection. You will collect the sample from a very site-specific location, approximately 3 meters diameter circle or length of tree/vine row. It is important to collect 10-20 core samples to a 6-inch depth with a soil probe to create a composite sample

SHIP SAMPLE: Upon sample collection you will complete the lab sample form and ship to the Agriculture and Food Laboratory. More details will be provided once you register. Expect that analysis & benchmarking will take much longer than traditional fertility sampling –final report to be delivered following crop harvest.