Managing soil fertility doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. In this workshop from the 38th Annual California Small Farm Conference, we demonstrate a suite of free, easy-to-use online tools that any farmer can use to improve nutrient use efficiency, reduce costs, minimize nutrient loss to the environment, and support soil health management practices.

The UC SAREP cover crop database, first released in 1999, provides detailed information on over 40 cover crop species commonly grown in California. The database helps growers understand each species' unique characteristics, including planting requirements, management details, nutrient contributions, and pest interactions, enabling informed decisions about cover crop integration.

This resource provides an overview and worksheet to assist farmers and researchers in estimating nitrogen budgets, addressing the complexities of managing organic nitrogen from compost, manures, and crop residues for optimal plant availability.

The Cover Crop Decision Tool, created by the Midwest Cover Crops Council, is an online tool designed to help farmers in the Midwest region of the U.S. select cover crops suitable to their climatic conditions and that will help them accomplish specific goals, including optimizing soil nitrogen, preventing erosion, providing suitable livestock forage, etc.

This workbook, produced by the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES, now Marbleseed), provides recordkeeping templates that can be used for both organic certification and crop insurance reporting – a valuable way to optimize your recordkeeping time when you are participating in both of these programs.

Check out this Organic Crop Insurance resource kit from the Organic Agronomy Training Service (OATS). In it, you'll find a wide variety of helpful resources, including links to a short course, a podcast series, useful factsheets, articles, and more.

The National Organic Program Organic Integrity Learning Center supports the professional development and continuing education of professionals working to protect organic integrity by providing free online training. Explore The Learning Center and all it has to offer in terms of free training and outreach materials for organic farmers/operators and organic handlers.

How much nitrogen (N) does an organic grain or silage corn crop need? This project team, led by Jason Kaye at Penn State University, developed a model that predicts unfertilized corn yield, based on the N contributions of SOM and decomposing cover crops. This model has been integrated into an N decision support tool, which calculates the supplemental N fertilizer requirements for organic grain and silage corn in Pennsylvania.