Accumulation rate of soil organic material

When you do OM246 testing to find the total organic material at known depths of the rootzone, you can use those test results to find the net accumulation rate of organic material in the rootzone. This is a useful value to know, because you can then:

• adjust sand topdressing with more precision
• check if your grass and growing environment and management practices are causing organic material to accumulate at normal, above average, or below average rates
• consider whether to make adjustments in OM removal, OM dilution, or OM accumulation rate in order to achieve your surface performance goals

I’ve been responding to a lot of questions about this recently, and I wanted to point to a few resources for more about this topic.

Change in soil organic material with sand addition at PACE Turf goes through the quantities of sand that will reduce organic material by a fixed amount.

A new ATC Doublecut episode discusses Using OM246 test results to get net organic material accumulation rate.

I also recommend these blog posts, and a calculator:

• The inexorable rise of soil organic matter
• The OM246 Shiny app
• Organic material accumulates more rapidly in putting green soils under these two conditions

If you know your OM246 test results, and if you know the quantity of sand applied between those two testing dates, you can easily calculate the net accumulation rate.