Soil Health Buckets
Assess your soil’s health.
You can use easy tests to determine how well your soil functions. Using simple tools, you can test your soil’s aggregate stability, water infiltration rate, temperature, and physical structure. These are indicators of soil health and improve the soil’s ability to capture water, support soil life, and promote plant growth.
Record your progress.
Recording your results is a great way to see how your management decisions are impacting the soil. Has your water infiltration rate and soil aggregation clearly improved? Great, your soil is capturing water and supporting soil life! Does your soil struggle to infiltrate rainfall and have poor aggregate stability? That’s okay, you can implement practices that support soil and plant health to improve things for the future.
Build your own bucket.
Nearly all of the materials required for the Soil Health Bucket can be found at local hardware or grocery stores for approximately $100 and can be reused many times, including the plastic cups, water bottles, coffee strainers, sink strainers, thermometer, shovel, rubber mallet, and ziptop bags.
Infiltration rings can be fabricated by local welding shops or purchased online here from Conservation Demonstrations: Purchase an Infiltration Ring.
