A healthy soil is full of life. All organisms have a role to play in maintaining a healthy and productive soil. This factsheet covers the benefits of soil biology, harmful microbiota, and how to improve soil biology.

Understanding and managing the interacting components of soil health - physical, biological and chemical factors - is essential to create robust and productive soils that are able to sustain commercial potato production. This PotatoLink magazine article examines some aspects of soil physical properties and how they impact agricultural practice (and how agricultural practices impact soil physical properties).

Soil fumigation can play a role in managing major disease issues. In this episode, Applied Horticultural Research's Dr Jenny Ekman discusses soil fumigation with Chad Hutchinson of the TriCal group.

An interactive panel session with some of the PotatoLink team, Peter O’Brien, Peter Philp, Tim Walker and Nigel Crump on disease management, nutrition management, weed control, and more.

Planting cover crops improves soil structure and health, controls soilborne disease and weeds, reduces erosion and nutrient loss, and adds nitrogen. Dr Kelvin Montagu delivered an interactive online training course on cover crops for potato farmers and agronomists.

Potato grower, Darren Long and Dr Kelvin Montagu talk all things cover crops and discuss how they can assist with building up soil health – including practical tips & tricks!

The 2-hour masterclass aims to provide potato growers and advisers with the understanding they need to improve soil biology, potato yields and their bottom line.

Albert Schirring covers the role of biologicals in soil health and the opportunities in enhancing crop productivity in potatoes.

Soil health is closely linked to soil microbiology. This fact sheet outlines information on a broad group of soil microbes including fungi, bacteria and pseudomonas, and explains how different levels, numbers and ratios of these microbes can impact the overall health of your soil and crops.

With a growing interest in the area of soil health and the wide range of products available, this fact sheet explores organic soil amendments, biologicals and biostimulants to help growers understand what these products are and how they work.

This case study outlines the economic considerations when using compost in vegetable production systems. It is based on lessons learned from several Soil Wealth and Integrated Crop Protection (ICP) demonstration sites, during the period 2014 to 2016.

This case study provides a unique long-term grower perspective on using compost on a commercial vegetable farm. Learn more from Sam Calameri of Baldivis Farms in Western Australia who started trialing compost on-farm more than 10 years ago.