Residue & Wind

           The fall of 2015 we had several wind events of short duration where winds gusted to 30, 40 and 50mph, depending on the event.  I never gave much thought to it at the time; however, this spring it was a shock to see a couple of bare areas on SE slopes.
           This field started out with good standing cover of stripper headed spring barley that was chem fallowed, and seeded to WW around September 20th of 2015.  We missed the moisture so much of the field did not emerge until late October or early November.  This is a scene similar to what I experienced 30 years ago, in this same field,  when I mistakenly thought that it was good to mow standing stubble early in the season for ground cover.  it didn't take a lot of wind to deposit residue drifts up to a foot deep on our NE facing slopes at the time.  Only once did I make that mistake.  After that, I mowed a short time prior to seeding, leaving standing stubble most of the fallow year.  We needed to shorten the stubble to minimize problems drilling.

        The pic below shows where I chopped a hole in the packed residue drift.  The drift was  4" deep and very dense packed.  It was easy to cut this hole with my hand tool.  Walking on this was like walking on a firm sponge.  Very few WW cultivars emerge through this dense, deep mat.  As may be expected the soil surface was very damp.  Soil was cool but not cold, --probably in the low 60's.

       The pic below shows a WW plant that made it through this dense residue pack.   Close up shows that the plant received light nearly to the ground level.  I don't have a clue as to why a few cultivars emerged where the vast majority did not.

  

Hopefully, we won't have a repeat of these wind events for years to come.  One event in late November dropped our cast iron flag pole my grandfather put up over 100 years ago.  Winds topped 50mph.  Very little damage was noted except for the flag pole.