?? HOW TO USE A COVER CROP ??

 This is a cleaned up version of an earlier post that will be deleted.  I've concluded that the first step in using cover crops is to know what your soil needs, and that means, take, and develop an understanding of the biological test for the field.  This will satisfy the first rule of cover cropping, --know your objective.  I've also learned that with "new" fields, take the complete test, --there are options given by the lab.  Following, --I will go section by section with comments relating my current understanding of the test  (example pic below).  The test result from Earthfort has basically three sections: top-middle-bottom.
--Description area:  When submitting your sample, give complete info on your applied fertilizer, farming method, cultivar to be grown.  Follow the sampling instructions, and don't delay sending them, after they have been bagged.  Failure to name a crop will result in a default category of perennial grass, and this can skew the result.
--Top Section:  Dry Weight, -- can indicate several things about a soil like structure, and location.  A high number (low water content) may indicate soil structure issues.
         Bacteria/Fungi/Hyphal dia., --best when Bacteria and Fungi are high in both total and active, and they are somewhat balanced in numbers.  Hyphen dia. less than 2.5 may indicate harmful or problematic conditions.
--Center Section: Protozoa/Nematodes/ Mycorrhiza.  Protozoa, --best with high numbers for Flagellates and Amoebae and a balance between the two. Flagellates move fast and like large pore spaces.  Amoebae are slow and like small pore spaces.  Balance with high numbers indicates your soil structure is probably good.  Ciliates are anaerobic.  High number indicates water logged soil, --zero is best.
           Nematodes are mostly good.  Root feeders are the problem.  The following numbers are best.   Bacteria/fungal feeder numbers (>4), fungal/root feeder numbers (<2), root feeder numbers (<1), predatory feeder numbers (1-2, they eat root feeders).
           Mycorrhizal Colonization can be measured if a plant root ( > 10") is included in the sample.  I'm confused as to what crops can benefit form mycorrhiza.  There is conflicting information.  My understanding is that Brassica's don't use mycorrhiza, and our wheats have had the benefit bred out of them, --mostly from lack of understanding of it's importance.
--Bottom Section: Organism Ratios, --indicate the relative balance between the organisms.
       Nitrogen Cycling Potential, -- calculated mostly from the numbers and balance of Flagellates and Amoebae.  These both eat bacteria and fungi and convert their nutrients to plant usable form.  Nematodes do a little of this also but play a minor role.  This potential is calculated for three months activity.
       All the above statements are subject to interpretation and an understanding of interacting properties.   I have attended four, one hour webinars, and I will attend more in the future to develop a better understanding of what is going on in the soil biosphere, and how we can exploit it.
       The lab provided me with a summary or their findings on twelve points of this test.  This soil has been cropped more than 100 years, mostly with wheat, barley, and fallow.  This test indicates that the field is in poor condition:  It needs organic matter.  The fauna is starving, they need food.  Nematode numbers are low, but diversity is OK.  Total fungi/bacteria ratio is too low for most plants.  Active fungi to bacteria ration indicates soil is dominated by bacteria and becoming more bacterial.
        This field is capable of 100b/a of wheat when moisture is available.  There is a lot of potential for the future.

                                    SO, TODAY, HOW DO WE PROCEED??
       ---All the literature recommends that you select cc cultivars for a specific goal you wish to reach. There seems to be mixed opinions on the number of cultivars needed in a mix from 5 - up.  With each cultivar having it's own signature about the exudes it leaks, and the depth it roots, in my opinion you ought to plant as many different cultivars as you can find and afford. 
      In 2015 we planted two different mixes.  One was a (10 cultivar) mix for biomass, nitrogen, and nutrient recovery as a goal.  The second mix (5 cultivars) was a recommendation to us for what goal (?).  We planted cultivars with a mix of seed from very small (cabbage) to very large (pea).  All was seeded with the CrossSlot and emerged, so that was a favorable outcome.  The large seed was planted through one rank and the small seed through the other rank.  Is it important to do it this way, --probably not, at least with a CrossSlot!  We had great emergence of tiny seed placed many times deeper than recommended.  That is one of the benefits of the CrossSlot, --it's ability to bring up a crop in adverse conditions.
      ---The bio. tests last year identified: --tight soil, no mycorrhiza, poor balance between bacteria, fungus, protozoa.  That was surprising to me considering the top 4" of soil was made up of worm castings.  Hopefully we addressed the tight soil this year with the radish, cabbage, and mustard cultivars in the cc mix.
       ---This spring we'll take three biological tests.  One from the 10 cultivar cc mix, and one from the 5 cultivar mix area to see if differences can be identified, along with one from the adjoining CF field that was part of the original CRP field.  This, hopefully, will show some differences that we can react to.
       ---Since these fields are planted to WW for 2016, options are limited, but not stopped, in the attempt to improve soil health.  We're looking  at slow developing and low growing legumes to inter-seed that possibly will thrive after harvest of the cereal grain (ww) and leave a live root growing after the cash crop is matured. 
       ---If weather cooperates, after harvest, consider planting radish, cabbage,+, into the legume cultivars.  We'll try to matchup cc cultivars to match the soil needs identified in the biological tests.
       ---Late fall 2015, there was a huge emergence of radish.  What to do about them this spring,--if anything?  There are a lot of large Graza radish plants surviving to this point in time after some cold temperatures.  Our biggest problem is Rush Skeleton Weed.  If the crop and cc stand doesn't compete it out, we'll have to rethink it's management.
       I'll be updating this post from time to time as the 2016 crop develops and differences express themselves.

Erosion -- winter 2016

     All in all, the Palouse Hill region hasn't faired too badly this winter.  The traditional-conventional tilled ground is the worst, of course.  Microclimates come into play and raise havoc in places, and leave other areas lightly touched.  It appears that fields with any kind of conservation tillage where residue is left on the surface has less damage.  The more the residue, the less the damage.  My biggest surprise was east of SR195 toward the Idaho border, --some serious erosion.  This is traditionally annually cropped with winter wheat seeded into lentil, pea, garb, or canola ground.  The fall was extremely dry, so the winter wheat emerged very late.  Many people still cultivate this ground prior to seeding, and these fields are ripped hard.  Those who have seeded directly into these fields without cultivating faired quite well.    The pic's below are all from the areas that traditionally use fallow as part of the rotation.  This region nearly always gets ripped during the transition from winter to spring.  Rarely does a farmer get a stand of winter wheat that protects the highly eroded areas of his fields, and this fact continues to make a bad situation worse.

       Most of the cultivated fallow fields seeded to winter wheat get their rill pattern established in Oct-Nov.  These normally are not seen without walking the field.  When the ground freezes and the snow or rains come, these little traces gain size as the season progresses.  In this pic the snow drift continues to feed this erosive condition.

     This pic shows deep rilling on a fallow/winter wheat field using tillage.

        This pic shows shallow rilling on a fallow/winter wheat cultivated field.  Unfortunately, any volume of water received from here on will find it's way down these rills, making them bigger, moving more soil, and depriving the crop.

      Another example of serious rilling and soil movement (same field).  That snow bank carries a lot of water with will feed more soil and water into the ditch at the bottom.

      This pic shows the dirt in the remaining snow bank.  We had high winds on relatively bare ground when we received our snow.  Not only do we have water erosion, but earlier we had wind erosion.

      

      This no-till farmer apparently thought his field was too rough, so he took his quad and heavy harrow and combed the field.  Quads have tremendous traction, but they have their limit, which was exceeded here, exposing soil to the elements.  From my viewpoint this is recreational tillage, with little purpose in no-till.  This combing of the field is standard practice with conventional tillage because the primary tillage operation (plow, disc, chisel) leave the ground in an un-seedable condition.  Sometimes multiple passes, are made to smooth the terrain.  Many of today's drill designs will handle uneven terrain.  Harvesting can be tricky for some crops grown in the region, but doable.        

2016 CROPPING SYSTEMS CONFERENCE (PNDSA)

      The Pacific Northwest Direct Seed Association has just pulled off another fantastic conference at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick, WA.  The facility is top drawer for a gathering of this type, and with the new Marriott Hotel connected to it, it's even better.  Gabe Brown, a farmer/rancher from Bismarck North Dakota, gave a compelling presentation for introducing Cover Crops into our cropping system to rebuild soil health.  He was well received, and the leadership had to move his breakout session to the main auditorium to accommodate everyone who had expressed an interest in hearing more.  The breakout sessions were five meeting rooms where different subjects were presented and discussed at two different time periods each day in the two day session.

      In one of these rooms several farmers gave presentations on how they managed their direct seed operations.  It was very interesting for me this year to hear all the different ideas presented for why they are doing what they are doing.  In prior years I have struggled with these farmer to farmer exchanges.  I have viewed these presentations as methods to survive while removing cultivation from the cropping system.  I had been there, done that, and know these were short term fixes.  Many will view successful direct seeding as the goal, but I have come to the realization that direct seeding is only a step to a higher goal of restoring the natural productivity of the soil.  Our operation is now beyond successful direct seeding.  We can now concentrate on improving soil health, on our way to the ultimate goal of sustainable crop production without chemical inputs.

       Recognizing for several years that surface residue, on undisturbed soil was key to protecting soil and retaining moisture (the goal at the time), we struggled to successfully seed into that environment.  For years we did not seed a spring crop because of seeding difficulties that resulted in poor yields.   Now, that is all behind us, --what a relief!  The stripper header allows us to keep our high residue producing grain stubble long and intact to reduce air movement which helps preserve moisture, and the CrossSlot drill allows us to successfully seed and emerge our cash crops (spring or fall) in the most adverse seeding conditions we are, or likely will be, faced with.

                32 foot stripper head harvesting barley.

 24 foot CrossSlot seeding spring wheat into a tangle of heavy (23,000#/ac) winter wheat residue that was stripper headed.  This amount of residue was developed from winter wheat on fallow averaging over 100 bu, followed by winter wheat on winter wheat averaging 85bu.  Wind and winter snow flattened much of the residue in which we are seeding soft white spring wheat.

EDITING POSTS

I edit the posts over several days, changing pics, editing narrative and cleaning up sentence structure, in an attempt to be clear on the message I wish to leave.

StripperHeader - snow catch 2

Today I relaunched my HOBO's temperature sensors, which should have been in the ground 6wks ago.  This is in the SJ-Ewan area.  We actually had enough snow to show significant difference between mowed stubble and tall stubble.  This field was fallowed in 2015 behind WW.  The stubble stood (26-30") but has succumbed somewhat to the elements.  The mowed portion of the field stands ≈4".  The only place I encountered frost was in the bare ground site for the HOBO sensor, and it was soft.

This pic shows the mowed portion with a lot of wheel tracks, which reduced the height even more.

This pic shows the un-mowed portion.  The stubble at this point in time is a jumble.  Between weather events and wheel tracks, a lot of snow catch has been compromised.  There are snow depth variations within the standing stubble.  The snow depth is fairly even in the mowed area.

These two pics show the snow depth in the stubble on the left, and also the depth in the mowed area on the right.  The stubble here doesn't demonstrate the melt around the stems as it did in Thornton.

     Now that our interest is to keep the stubble as tall as possible, and noticing that it lays down, crumbles, or in other ways shrinks, we need to rethink some aspects of our operation to improve this condition.  Maybe: --change to narrower wheels/tires on the sprayer and combine to reduce trample.  Change wheat and barley to stiffer cultivars that will resist deterioration.  This would help maintain residue during periods when low residue crops are raised.

StripperHeader-snow catch

        Thanks to a reader looking for an update on snow catch with the stripper head, I checked out Thornton where we have standing stripper headed sbly stubble, --and more snow.  It was a timely look as our snow is being effected by this beautiful 48 degree day.  Hard to imagine that a couple of days ago we were in the highs of upper 20's, and New Years eve we were at -2 degrees.  There is some frost in the ground.
       In December, while St. John/Ewan area was getting a mixture of snow/rain, Thornton received all snow with winds that blew both from the NE and SW during these snow deposits.  This left drifts on both sides of the hills on vulnerable land.
       The drought of 2015 reduced the stubble height to ≈19" and barley being relatively weak straw, didn't stand very well after experiencing some weather events (wind, rain).  However, I could see a significant difference in snow redeposition comparing, cultivated ground and short stubble (4-5"), to our stripper headed field.  A new harvest technique is becoming quite popular in the region.  This technique uses high capacity combines with fine chop straw processors, and 40' flexible draper heads that can follow close to the ground, and process most of the crops top growth.  It has it's advantages when trying to direct seed with a hoe type drill, or when cultivating.  The technique is not so great for disc type drills.  This new technique does have it's down side for saving moisture by allowing snow redeposition, and air movement near the soil surface.

         When I approached Thornton this was a scene that greeted me.  This is a significant snow drift on a northwest facing slope.  Obviously a major redeposition of snow on this cultivated field.  The rough surface did not give much resistance to snow movement.  

       Above is a pic showing the snow redeposition on a NE slope, where the top pic shows a NW slope.  This pic shows snow moved off the short (4-5") stubble left by the new harvest technique.   

       The pic above shows two farming methods side by side.  On the left is our stripper headed sbly, and the right shows plowed ground.  The plowed ground shows obvious redeposition.  The stripper headed field has some redeposition where there is thin short stubble (eroded ridge lines, wheel tracks), but all the ground had >4" in the worst cases.

       This pic shows the effect of short thin stubble.  This is our stripper headed sbly on an eroded ridge.  The stubble is relatively thin and ≈12" tall compared to the better ground with thicker stand and 19" or greater stubble height.  There is still >4" of snow left on this exposed ridge.  The pic's upper left shows redeposition.  There is 9-12" in that N facing drift, so we lost some snow from the weaker ground.

     This pic sort of shows redeposition of snow from wheel track to standing stubble.  There is 2-3" difference in many places, depending on slope, direction, width, and condition of the stubble.  

      Notice that the snow is lower where stubble is standing tall and dense.  Radiant heat is being transferred down the stems and melting snow near the stem.

     This pic from Feb. 2014 gives a better view of the same phenomena of snow melting around/close to the stems.

      This pic is from November 2015 following a nice 1.1" of rain on what had been a very dry fall at Thornton.  There is a very heavy mat of residue and the sbly stubble is about 26" tall in this location.  This spade hole is ≈7" deep, and it shows moisture through that depth at the sides of the pic which exposes two seed rows.  You can make out the root line on both rows.  The middle(mid row) wetted to 3".  We seed on 10" row centers.   

       I didn't take a shovel with me today to dig through the snow and frost, but I'm betting, that in our field, the snow is melting and moving into the soil profile through those undisturbed stem/root channels, similar to what is seen in the pic above.

      For several years (even prior to the introduction of our ULD system) I have been aware that the moisture moves quickly through the soil profile in our fields.  The soil doesn't get mucky under foot.  Most of the time I feel we could spray or seed the day following a significant rain.  We resist the temptation, --mostly.  I have some concern about what is happening to the soluble nutrients, --they have to be going with the water deeper in the profile, --and that is, in part, what is driving my interest in cultivars like radishes (cover crop cultivars in general), to recover deep nutrients and redeposit near the surface for crop use.  Recently I read a summary of some research stating our field crops are only utilizing 35-50% of applied nitrogen.--that further raises my concern.  Well, this topic is for another post.

      TO SUMMARIZE:  

     ----I am extremely pleased with the direction we are going with our ULD system.   The stripper head is doing it's part in the effort to gather and maintain our limited moisture resource.  It's been part of the answer to all the problems we have faced in the past with direct seeding, and offers us the versatility to solve problems I envision we will encounter in the future. My only regret is that we probably can't make the stripper work for all of our crop types.