What made the biggest difference in your soil over the long run?

I’ve been gardening for many years, mostly in heavier soil, and one thing that’s stood out to me is how slowly real improvement shows up. Some of the best changes I’ve seen didn’t happen in one season, but over several years of leaving things alone more, disturbing the soil less, and letting biology catch up. Especially with clay and weather swings, it feels like patience has mattered more than any single amendment. I’m curious how others here have seen their soil change over the long term what shifts took years to show results, and what ended up making the biggest difference looking back?

For me in north Texas, its been composting everything I can in place, and supplementing as I can with wood chips and manure. I went from straight sand in an oak forest to a foot deep of dark black soil full of life.over 10 years. Not hard work, and totally worth it. I prefer adding soil on top rather than trying to amend it in ground. Just my experience.

I bet its much colder up north!

Organic matter such as leaf mold and compost.

You might enjoy the Soil Series by Dr Bryant Redhawk:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

Especially these:

https://permies.com/t/63914/Soil

https://permies.com/t/93911/soil-mother-nature

The 'best' amendment that I have added to my garden spaces has to be mulch. By insulating and protecting the soil, I have found that it loosens and resists crusting which has been a boon to my gardening.

I have been working on changing lawn into growing space by putting a thick layer of mulch on top of an area and leaving it for a growing season. The next year, the soil is loose and easier to work with. I have found time to be my friend when it comes to ease of gardening.

Keeping chickens has made the biggest difference for us.

We keep them in a combined run/coop with rabbits and have ~12"-~16" of deep litter. We bag and add all of our grass clipping and fall leaves as well as any extra mulch to their area. I remove some of the material in late fall or early spring and age it. Then it gets spread over the regular garden beds and raised garden beds.

It took about a year for the magic to happen in the deep litter, it didn't look like much until then. I turn it with a garden fork regularly to speed the process up and keep from getting any hard pan areas. It is a somewhat labor intensive process at the times where I am harvesting the material or turning it. Otherwise, the chickens do everything.

A close second would be mulching every area we could, as we had the time. I think those 2 approaches work well together.

For context, we normally like to have 22-25 hens for eggs, and a rooster or two. We also hatch eggs and tractor those to butcher but the only contribution they make to the deep litter is what I move from the brooder into the coop/run after I move them to the tractors.

I have seen where some people will build a lightweight portable tractor and move it around their garden bed after the season is over. They put a couple of chickens in it during the day and move them back to the coop at night. I have not had time to try that yet.  

Mulch…lots of it…in raised beds.   This week I am tossing 30 old bales of straw into my raised beds. Then I am cleaning out the stalls in my barn.  That should given me 7 raised beds that will be in excellent condition for spring.

And, because there can be a fine line, I see this as different than the compost I add in the spring.   The compost is already  broken down. Normally, it takes the straw 2 to 3 years to break down.

Lenora L.Parr wrote:I’ve been gardening for many years, mostly in heavier soil, and one thing that’s stood out to me is how slowly real improvement shows up. Some of the best changes I’ve seen didn’t happen in one season, but over several years of leaving things alone more, disturbing the soil less, and letting biology catch up. Especially with clay and weather swings, it feels like patience has mattered more than any single amendment. I’m curious how others here have seen their soil change over the long term what shifts took years to show results, and what ended up making the biggest difference looking back?

I've noticed the same thing. Taking a "do no harm" approach has worked for me. Letting things that want to grow do their thing without my intervention. Basically letting the soil heal itself from much past abuse and nudging things along without trying to control everything.

For me I think what has helped the overall gardening and the soil the most is supporting native habitats. Restoring some native plants for the benefit of the helpful creatures that are supposed to be there. Putting up bird houses and perches for bluebirds etc. has made an huge difference in overall health of my land and gardens.

I encourage all of the critters with brush piles and rock piles. Yes, sometimes there is some damage done by some of these "pests" but I believe they contribute much more good than harm. If something is harmed or killed by pests it just means I didn't take the time to protect it.

Biochar, no-till, and deep mulching. My soil is a fine-grain silt loam and although its fertility is decent and I've used lots of compost over the years, the big change happened when I stopped digging, started adding biochar, and got into deep mulch with wood chips. Biochar adds structure and aeration that the unamended soil here is lacking, keeping it better hydrated during dry periods and preventing it from getting waterlogged and going anaerobic when it's wet for long spells. Avoiding disturbance helps preserve that structure as it develops, and this means all amendments go on top now - e.g. mulch.

The partial exceptions I make to the no-dig rule are around harvesting root crops like potatoes and kūmara, but even with these I don't have to fully dig a bed to get what I'm after. I also use a broadfork occasionally to loosen beds and this opens cracks that allow the decomposed mulch and biochar to work into the deeper parts of the soil.

One of the most welcome differences is how easy it is to pull some of the more troublesome weeds like buttercup, convolvulus, and grasses. These used to require tools to get the roots out but now most of the time I can just give a decent tug and they pop right out. Even fennel and dock with 25 cm taproots slide right out sometimes, and those get left on the surface to return all the good stuff that they mined from the subsoil.

Phil Stevens wrote:Biochar, no-till, and deep mulching. My soil is a fine-grain silt loam and although its fertility is decent and I've used lots of compost over the years, the big change happened when I stopped digging, started adding biochar, and got into deep mulch with wood chips. Biochar adds structure and aeration that the unamended soil here is lacking, keeping it better hydrated during dry periods and preventing it from getting waterlogged and going anaerobic when it's wet for long spells. Avoiding disturbance helps preserve that structure as it develops, and this means all amendments go on top now - e.g. mulch.

The partial exceptions I make to the no-dig rule are around harvesting root crops like potatoes and kūmara, but even with these I don't hav.....

Well said! I 100% agree. It sounds like we have similar native  soils. I could do more biochar for sure, but I heat my house with wood so I tend to use it all inside :)

28 years ago I began burning brush into charcoal and keeping things mowed. Added seeds of new fodder and anti parasite plants for pastures. I began to have harder times with drought and the soil lost fertility.  A few years ago I stopped burning except to vanish non biodegradable household waste. I began stacking all brush into piles.The brush piles act as fungi web feeders and perreneal compost. I allowed the pastures to grow all year whatever they wanted to and stopped mowing until late winter. This allowed maximum biomass production, deep rooted plants to aid perculation into my pastures. Mowing only in late winter there is no chance of killing land turtles, fawns or other often mown wildlife. The topsoil rapidly accumulated humus and the beneficial fungi colonized every niche. The new plants that colonized were mostly edible and all were beneficial.  My gardens are often made by electric fencing parts of the pasture. Of course the wide variety of plants improved soil structure and kept water from washing away animal nitrates and manure. This once annual mowing and no more brush burning has made the biggest difference in my soil. I found turning my brush piles  into biochar was detrimental to my soil building and the brush piles gave hibernation homes and nesting shelter to wildlife. Blackberries thrive up and over the brush piles because they hold moisture and nutrients.

I have permanent mounded garden beds and fields and pastures here in previous tobacco/grazing land in Central NC. I handle the two spaces differently because it’s hard to mulch 120 acres no matter how many loads Asplundh brings you.

In the gardens there’s two types of amendments: good and bad. Anything I think is good gets put on top. If you don’t mix it in it’s hard to do damage: mulch, compost, hay (no persistent broadleaf sprayed stuff - that sets you way back), ash, charcoal, whatever. Every year gets better and better. Just be patient and go for the small wins. Keep it fun so you keep it up and don’t be discouraged if some years some things fail. I don’t overreact with pests or deficiencies and usually they correct themself.

Big scale is so different, spread as much good stuff as you can, but also don’t be afraid to do a few applications of P K when you get started. Bring some levels back up and then stop “mining” the soil, and it starts to cycle again. Keep in mind how abused most land currently is. You’re not starting from Step 1, you’re at Step -100.

Another thing I want to mention is very strategic sub soiling. You can do it wrong but if you do it right it does so much good. It’s a good alternative to swales if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life making turns on a tractor.

Y’all are loving Mother Nature and bringing life back into the world. Just keep going!

Bj Murrey wrote:For me in north Texas, its been composting everything I can in place, and supplementing as I can with wood chips and manure. I went from straight sand in an oak forest to a foot deep of dark black soil full of life.over 10 years. Not hard work, and totally worth it. I prefer adding soil on top rather than trying to amend it in ground. Just my experience.

I bet its much colder up north!

That's pretty much my experience as well: My garden soil was a sandbox, with barely 1" of top soil when I started. the first thing I did was build beds, usually 4' X 8' and scraped the alleys clean so as to have 1.5" of "top soil".
I have chickens who give me *abundant* manure and their litter is made of wood chips, so when their house/ winter run gets cleaned, it all goes on the garden, or elsewhere, around prized trees.
Around here, town folks have to rake their leaves and bag them so they don't plug the city's sewers.
2 years ago, the weather was perfect (It stayed fairly dry for the entire week that the city was collecting). I got ahead and collected bags of leaves (with permission, of course), selecting the less groomed yards, as they are less likely to have been sprayed!
I collected over 100 big bags of the precious stuff and put my entire garden (and the alleys too) under a blanket of precious leaves. My garden has less weeds, I water less and I get more out of it, with a lot less effort. I now have almost a foot of good workable black soil.

Actually, as far as the weather, we have a pretty freaking mild fall and winter. We did get a "white Christmas", defined as a snow cover of at least 1", but we didn't have much more than that. It is melting now (34F) on the 26th of December.

Dealing with heavy red clay and pipe clay Daikon radishes, clovers and buckwheat, really any "fixing" cover crop were my best bang for the bucks and least labor intensive improvement of all!

Adding organic mater of all kinds as much as possible was the second best and second least costly with more labor.

Animals require a large amount of input of all types but they can also help HUGELY in many ways. Pigs can root and till also wallow out small ponds. Goats, pigs and homestead cattle can clear brush and brambles. All of them leave behind manures.

 

We have 2 different spaces: silvopastures and  
garden beds.

Our silvopastures have small-medium sections that are overrun by cheatgrass or other brome that can be quite flammable once seeded out. I’ve found grabbing large chunks of 6-8” high sheep manured old hay bedding in the Fall just before the rains start, and placing them intact/as is  over these cheatgrass sections improves the grass and forb diversity in that area very well.

For the garden beds, we take the rest of that sheep barn bedding and compost it Berkeley style, over late winter and spread it in the raised garden beds a few weeks before we’re ready to plant. After doing this for a few years, we are finally getting really nice veggies, and surprisingly not a lot of pests 👍

I planted & manage the turf for Hudson WI Soccer (45 Ac) beginning 1997 - took Master gardener class & began looking at many system. In 2002 used it's 13 acres of irrigation every 4 days, mowing mostly once every two weeks, used conventional fertilizers, could feel & see the hard soil through the grass - probe ½” to 3/4", No new young plants, used no mechanical aerification, detention pond would fill 4” on a 3” rain for at lest 6 days, and the turf was getting worse.  
Two soil test from Aglabs.com helped make a proposal for next 6 yrs. The board approved more then doubling amendment of near 20 elements.  Early 2003 we changed. By the end of 2004 we use 10/15% less water, after 1" rain we mow more often, have no thatch build up, and we walk on a safer carpet of grass.  In 2006 mowing a few times twice a week, irrigation is off a lot, can put probe in 3” +/- into the soil, tripled plant count, August we had a 5” in 24 Hr. rain and our detention pond showed no water within 24 hrs., and have very happy customer and their 600 safer children.  All we did was change the Amendments, met our goals and saved in all topics of turf management except frequency of mowing.  In 2008 cut amendments by 1/3.  2009 in a warm 3 wks drought = no mowing, no water, and no dormancy.  
   Mike Deneen

I’m working with volcano soil.  Farm #1 has soil made from long term degraded vegetable matter and volcanic ash. Farm #2 has soil that is degraded volcanic ash. Each farm has its challenges, but the best results I have seen with both is lightly tilling in compost between each crop (I till the top 3 to 4 inches) while also tilling in last crop’s mulch. I apply a 2 to 3 inch mulch layer to each crop, which by harvest time, is down to 1/2 to 1 inch.   So my answer is shallow light tilling in of fresh homemade compost between each crop and using mulch.

I have some of the garden area developed where it does ok using no-till, but it took perhaps 10 years to get to that point. I maintain a constant mulch on this soil, a mulch that includes compost. And only certain crops will produce well using no-till. After 5 years of no-till, I see that the soil is getting rather dense in spite of the worms, microbes, etc, and the veggie plants are not all that robust anymore. So I believe it is time to introduce the tiller and add a generous amount of compost again.  I plan to till down 6 inches and let the soil re-establish itself again.

By the way, I get a lot of rain on Farm #1. The past two years have been over 80 inches annually, and we get a light rain practically every night. So leaching is a definite issue. But Farm #2  is just opposite, getting little rain and seldom has leaching issues except occasionally (every 3 years) when heavy extended rain occurs. On both farms, nitrogen loss has to be watched. So I use applications of homemade fish emulsion and/or manure tea whenever the plants show signs of needing a nitrogen boost.

By the way, contrary to what I hear people often say, volcanic soil is not all that "rich". If one is growing pasture or non-fruiting trees, you don’t have to do much to it. But if you want to produce all your own food, then one needs to add nutrients to the soil.

By the way #2…. The compost I use is homemade. I put everything into it, and I mean everything as long as it organic compostable material, along with lava sand, heat treated coral and bones that have broken up using a hammer or running over the pile with my pickup truck (hammer vs truck depends upon how big the pile is). So it has a broad range of nutrients. And by using fresh grass clippings, animal manures, and dead animals, it has a goodly amount of nitrogen. No, I don’t  age my compost 6 to 12 months before using. It loses too much nitrogen that way. I coarsely sift it at about 3-4 months, tossing the chunks back into the next compost bin. I love my compost!

Well I'm gonna contradict others and say, if leaving my land alone was what improved the soil it would have been in great shape after a couple of decades of just being mowed every three years. It may be true that a couple of centuries ago, before anyone started farming here, this ridgetop was wooded and had good soil. Likely prior to 50 years ago when this became a land trust, it was farmed in non-ideal ways that stripped the soil. But also likely that it was always heavy clay. It varies--I put my orchard at the uppermost end where there is more sand in the soil, thus good drainage deeper; next my main garden in the next best soil. Adding a lot of organic matter, whether compost or leafmold or manure, is what has helped the most I'd say; I also add coarse sand. As for mulch, that seems like a given rather than a soil amendment. Although I've wondered how people with larger acreages manage; seems like it'd be hard to come up with enough mulch. The downside is mostly the mulch I can find is hay, and it all has clover and grass seeds in it that sprout and then I have to spend lots of time digging them out. What makes the MOST difference? Really, it's all these things. In my opinion you HAVE to add organic matter or some sort, to replace what you remove and feed the miniature livestock in the soil--and you have to mulch to keep the soil cool and moist in the summer and weedless--ha ha, okay, fewer weeds. Cover crops over winter help too, though I think of them as sort of a substitute for compost/manure/leafmold--if the cover crop doesn't take (usually either because it was too dry or because I got the last crop out and the cover crop seeded too late and winter set in), then I'd better be sure to add some kind of OM in the spring. My worst bed is the flowerbed, which is in a place with especially heavy bad soil, but the real reason it hasn't improved much is that it's mostly perennials so I'm not able to work amendments into the soil every year. I can add enough OM and sand to get a spot in good condition before setting a new plant in, but over years the soil reverts to heavy clay.

Alexander said,

"Big scale is so different, spread as much good stuff as you can, but also don’t be afraid to do a few applications of P K when you get started. Bring some levels back up and then stop “mining” the soil, and it starts to cycle again. Keep in mind how abused most land currently is. You’re not starting from Step 1, you’re at Step -100."

I absolutely agree with adding some needed nutrients to start the soil rebuilding process, did the same on our farm in 2024. I would call this soil life starter fertilization. Get a jump start as quickly as possible and then let the soil do its thing. Try and do a soil balance fertilization within reason and it will get you to a living soil much sooner. So much is said here about organic matter being added to the garden to make it productive, where does this organic matter come from? If you are robbing another area of its vegetation this is not a long-term solution, you must grow your own fertility on site !!

Doug--where does your NPK come from? Sometimes you have to jumpstart the refertilization of your soil. I do bring in manure from outside, as well as chicken manure from my own chickens; compost from my kitchen, the chickens, leaves, weeds from the garden, and sometimes from my woodrot piles in the woods (whose decomposition is hasted by getting urine dumped over them). Taking leaves from the woods is not good but I clear our nearly mile long lane, where the fertility from the leaves is undesirable, chop them with a lawnmower and stash them in wire bins for a year to turn into leafmold. So not all the fertility is coming from within the same garden but most is coming from my own place. I don't apologize for bringing in manure when I can get it--it helps the soil so much, and the person with pet horses and the one with goats are both glad to get rid of some surplus as they don't use it all themselves.

Laying down all cardboard. Mulch on top. Trench compost in place - cardboard and mulch on top. Three years time noticeable improvement. Can't imagine how wonderful after a decade...alas we have not let our feet rest more than four years in any spot. Maybe one day and then I can have more wisdom. Good luck!

I have only been fixing soil for like three years but for me it’s keeping soil covered and leaving it alone. I don’t have time to actively compost stuff so there’s allot of just throwing stuff on the ground and leaving it. I get better luck growing things in places that I leave alone than I do if I intentionally mess with the soil.

Mary Cook wrote: …. In my opinion you HAVE to add organic matter or some sort, to replace what you remove and feed the miniature livestock in the soil--and you have to mulch to keep the soil cool and moist in the summer and weedless--ha ha, okay, fewer weeds…

We find livestock - the big kind, in our case sheep - do this extremely well, grazing (holistically managed).
The urine and feces in ‘manure’ have been great for our pasture soils — so much so that we no longer have vernal pools in our clay soils unless it rains abnormally long and hard for weeks. (We used to get pooling instantly after a rain).
And the sheep love the forb ‘weeds’. I actually miss the ‘weed’ flowers now, because weeds are such a preferred food, that they tend to disappear from pastures😔.
I’ve adjusted our grazing so that bloom times are considered - something I missed initially in my quest to get the grass volume eaten or hayed before heading/seeding out.

I agree with Mary that it can he necessary to add compost. I think that compost is what made my garden soils deep and black, and now they’re still deep and black every year ehen in patches where no compost is added. I also let weeds grow where perennials aren’t established, so no ground is bare for long.

Also, grasses are very good fertility-creating and preserving plants. They let you keep soil on the land better than any other sort of plant except trees.

I am suspicious, however, of importing fertility from elsewhere because I think at a landscape scale. Of course, if it’s a waste product like sawdust or bagged leaves, that can be a very helpful source.

It would be interesting to hear what people think of the difference between mulching (dry decomposition) versus piling together as a compost heap or in the digestive system of animals (wet decomposition). I have a suspicion that the more effective option for soil improvement is the wet decomposition in an appropriate microclimate with food scraps, humanure, etc., and then working that into the soil—as it seems like it would mimic best the way that grassland ecosystems are supposed to build their excellent soils.

Mary,

We use pelletized chicken litter here, have been using it since about 2001 on our grassland used for seed production. We are in our 3rd year of organic transition for our tillable acres and use the pellets for NPK. The 4-3-2 pellets are also about 8.5% calcium so that adds to the value. In time we will cut back on the amount used as our organic matter percentage goes up along with cover crops improving fertility. Our farm in western MN was farmed chemically since the GMO corn and soybean era started. We have good inherent soil quality with a CEC of about 30 but the OM was 1.8% when we started in spring of 2024. Not much soil life to start so we did a shotgun approach in 2024 to get things moving. Chicken pellets, hard rock phosphate, potassium sulfate, zinc, copper, liquid fish and soil alive. 2025 was pellets, mined gypsum and liquid humic/fulvic acid in row. A plant tissue test in the fall of 2024 on volunteer oats told us our soil was in quite good balance so we went for crop fertilization this year and no corrective fertilization. The gypsum in 2025 is new for this farm and will be part of our program in 2026. Have always had a really good response from gypsum in our garden so it stands to reason it would help our tillable acres. The improvement to our soil tilth in 2 years is very impressive, the soil is soft underfoot, like walking on a pillow.

It's hard to tell which thing made the biggest difference on this hectare.  There was an initial round of grading/earthworks on much of the property, but otherwise it has been no-till, chop and drop (or throw into a nearby pile) and hand managed - no burning save turning a limb pile into a half yard of charcoal.  These unnammended soils do look better than the former lawn, but 5+ years later and it's still not fertile enough to grow anything other than some hardy greens or trees.

The biggest difference is probably the mycelia feeder or "Super Duper Hugel Pooper" as I like to call it.

Like, 6" of strawish stuff, in a foot deep trench on a local elevation maxima, between a few foot+ diamater logs set on the ground (the walk n squat rails) which then gets filled with compressed humanure wood chip matrix (fresh septic trench compresses like a pile of woodchips if stepped on.)   In the first growing season after capping toilet sites with a few inches of poor topsoil, they were dominated by clovers, suggesting the C:N ratio is C heavy in a my "compressed poo- chip matrix."   Interesting how turning hot manure into a thin layer with nearly maximized surface area contact with wood, totally alters the decomposition process.  After the first year of clover and a few hardier plants, Super Duper hugel Pooper sites support high yield squash, tomatoes, and broccoli. I'm pretty sure they would support high yield anything, but root vegetables are not recommended XD

There's also like, 500 lbs of primo fertilizers, 12 yards of finished horse manure, 10 poultry worth of manure for 6 or so years, and something like 50 yards of wood from the site was returned to the soil.   Apart from the wood, none of this stuff was added to the toilets.

If a "long run" is 5 years, the super duper hugel pooper is definitely the biggest soil difference.  It makes significant calories now.  However, if "the long run" is more like 10 or 20 years, most of the other inputs that have been slowly added added over 7 years could be the bigger difference, but I won't be here to see the 55 seed started fruit and nut trees grow up.  There 15 or so that are 15' tall, otherwise the trees are still popping off 3 or 4 at a time each year.  They had a mostly rough start in some fresh hugels, or a rough life thus far;  9 of the trees are still knee high 5+ years later.  

These ones are almost certainly stuck in a hardpan bowl.  Transplant or no, there was never going to be a taproot there  XD

That is, until something happens.  Swales which changed water flows and then caused ~50 to 100 ft^2 sections of hillside to moves a few inches, and then a tree pops off, or some perennial broccoli rabe plants are growing off irrigation and surviving a summer without rain...big difference!

John--on the question of humanure being C rich. Ours is mixed with sawdust (and TP of course) and used almost exclusively on fruit trees (I have some doubt about the safety of using it in the vegetable garden but it all gets used up in the orchard so it's a moot point). I've noticed that it doesn't seem to be that potent and concluded that it's because we don't pee in the outhouse--we have a pisseria in the house, and I dump the urine bucket on various compost piles--some next to gardens, some woodrot piles on the edge of the woods. I saw a chart in New Internationalist years ago that showed that most of the Nitrogen and phosphorus humans excrete is in the urine. So if I want to goose a fruit tree more I try to find some manure--because animal manure is pretty much always mixed with bedding (high C) but the animals are peeing into it too so, assuming their N and P is similar, this is more potent on the nitrogen. If your arrangements are similar that might explain the surfeit of clover.

It's tough to pick just one,,,,,, My preferred technique now is mulching in fall with aged manure topped with wood chips. I guess if I could only have one I would say just wood chips. They can be applied any time of year and the benefits are many.

I like to have multiple amendments to work with. We've come to a point where we use a combination of vermicompost with biochar, aged manure, wood chips, and yes... store bought liquid and granular organic fertilizers( I hear you booing). It's useful to have several things in the toolbox.

But if I have one vote, wood chips.