Quantifying soil health after long term cover cropping

Key Points
• Manage cover crops as you would a cash crop.
• Physical and biological soil tests may complement traditional chemistry tests.
• Organic matter is critical for soil health. Keep something growing or covering the ground as
much as possible (track levels over time).
• Useful measures for monitoring soil health include: basic soil chemistry tests, PreDicta,
aggregate stability, soil community analysis, beneficials.
• Financial benefits (both on and off farm) may result from well-managed cover cropping.

Optimising cover cropping for the Australian vegetable industry (VG16068) has been funded by Hort Innovation, using the vegetable industry research and development levy and contributions from the Australian Government. Hort Innovation is the grower-owned, not-for-profit research and development corporation for Australian horticulture.