Solvita Blog
Recent Advances in Solvita Science supporting Organic Systems
When organic amendments such as manure or compost are soil applied it is difficult to predict response using ordinary soil tests. Several recent research projects have shed more light on intrinsic nutrient potential of natural fertilizers. The projects all employed...
Solvita SLAN test advances across new boundaries
The Solvita SLAN test has been gaining steadily as word of mouth, research trials and farmer reports show that organic-bound Nitrogen – the kind revealed by the SLAN test- is of real practical significance. At two recent turf-science events in RI and MD, Karl...
Solvita versatility supports flexible field studies and improved accuracy
In science it is often the case that increasing the sample size decreases the variance of the result, meaning large samples produce better estimates of content than do small samples. Soil laboratories use only a few grams of soil per sample for regular nutrient...
Soil Health and Deep Plowing Under The Tuscan Sun
Italy to many, is the birthplace of farming with a soil nomenclature system dating from 500 AD. In the mere distance of Maine to North Carolina they have all four major soil temperature groups – frigid, mesic, thermic and hyperthermic and 4-times the soil unit...
Unlocking the key: Soil CO2 respiration and field conditions
Interesting and potentially very valuable relationships between CO2 respiration and soil conditions have recently been revealed in a soil monitoring project using the Solvita basal CO2 test. At the Woods End Farm, staff take a soil sample each week and perform...
Soil health testing demands a new understanding of soils
Soil health testing needs its own set of calibrations and guidelines in order to have its potential fully realized. This has come into focus recently with studies on how soils behave biologically. Normally, when a soil dries out, a sudden addition of rain or...
United Kingdom Enters Soil Health Test Market along with Solvita
Calling it a "health check for your soil" England’s largest independent soil testing firm NRM Laboratories (Berkshire & Norfolk) has introduced UK's first Soil Health test. The analysis features Solvita as the cornerstone biology test for CO2 evolution combined...
Cover crop innovation, water infiltration improvements demonstrated in Pennsylvania farming
(L) At Criswell Farms a cover crop mix is rolled, and blades open up a space to immediately plant the next crop. (R) John Chibirka demonstraes water infiltration on Jim Harbach’s Schrack Farms (Bottom) Lucas Criswell shows how alterations to equipment enabled planting...
Soil CO2 Respiration: It’s More than Soil Health
Soil CO2 respiration should be center-stage in the emerging Soil Health discussion, according to Brinton who addressed a recent Soil Renaissance gathering in Oklahoma City. He showed early data from the Swedish soil ecologist Lundegårdh who first quantified plant CO2...
In Witness of Worms, Roots and Cover Crops
Soil Health aficionados like to say that roots and worms make channels down into the soil – transferring nutrients and carbon between soil layers. What this looks like in reality was made clear at a recent Soil Health field-day in Berwick, PA, sponsored by NRCS and...
Soil Vitality in Hobbit-land: Special Application for Solvita?
Imagine an ideal soil climate, little or no soil tillage, and rotational animal grazing: what's the soil health of that system? We ran Solvita on soils from the North Island of New Zealand (near where the epic fantasy film The Hobbit was shot) and saw some unusual...
Pilgrimage for Soil Quality on Spain’s El Camino Trail
The "El Camino de Santiago" trail is known to adventurers and Christian pilgrims who traverse this path from France into north-western Spain. Along the way, one experiences the striking, semi-arid Castile y León region farmed to wheat & barley for the last 500...