The Feed Crop, Grain, Forage and Soil Health Thread

[mike_belben]

You may wanna have a look at what these guys are doing with bacterial innoculants for sopping wet baleage.  Maybe incorporate a tank and some spray jets into your hay train project.  

Salvage Through Fermentation


I dont know what their magic sauce is precisely but i know it didnt take me long to make my own from household goods and rainwater.  Ken is on youtube also. Youd like his stance on glyphosate.

[newoodguy78]

Does anyone know of a test kit that can be used to test soil for checking N-P-K levels also potentially the ph? I know sending out soil samples is an option. Looking for something that maybe I can do and then compare the results.
The sales pitch from the fertilizer company to use more and more is getting old and expensive.
If it's necessary I get it but my gut tells me it's not.
The best results I've had improving ground and subsequently the crops and weed pressure is directly opposite of what I'm being told to do. The salesman and a few professionals we've had visit to try and advise us get real squirmy when I start asking the hard questions. Very much leads me to believe I'm on to something.

[beenthere]

 soil test kit

[mike_belben]

Im not a salesman or a biologist but i went from ground that was rock hard, id literally use a milwaukee drill if i had to dig by hand.  Was good for making glass and pottery.  It has turned to 3 inches minimum of fluffy black soil in 2 years, and thats where i filled my pond in with concrete demo, rebar and woodchips!   It is downstream from my compost pile and the structure and growth is unlike any other spot on the property because of the biology thats always getting washed in.  This pig is fluffing up huge sod clumps like nothing in it but it was hard as a rock before. 


You gotta be composting, it is entirely about aerobic microbial activity.  I dont think a soil test will do anything but keep you a slave to conventional. 


If you wanna run a test of your own, pick your worst spot and stake it off, take pictures of a core sample etc. Then start putting all the leaves, sawdust, grass, food scraps and manure on it that you possibly can.  I would spray with manure and/or pile on some punky spongey hardwood to innoculate.  This is gonna sound stupid but expired yogurt and dairy products have an abundance of the right bacteria to get your soil biology firing back up.  Youll know you got it when that spot has grass to your knees and the rest is ankle high. 


I did a soil test once and it may as well have said drink more ovaltine. 

[newoodguy78]

@beenthere Thank you I'll look into that one 
Mike I agree with you on many points on this and have seen the same results with processes I'm doing just in a slightly different manner. I took a piece of essentially dead worthless soil and within a season and a half it's producing some of the best product employees that have been here almost 20 years have ever seen.
Where the shoe starts to pinch is when you look at the scale I need to do it on. I'm dealing with over 80 acres of ground specifically for vegetable production. 3 years ago there was 2 full time people in the field on tractors most everyday through the season and one working nights and weekends wrenching on the stuff they stoved up. Now except for the transplanting and some of the spraying it's just me.
 The whole time I need to keep in mind there's multiple peoples paychecks involved with decisions the boss and I make. Something I take very seriously and quite honestly stresses me out sometimes.
The reason I'm looking for the independent test is dead opposite of trying to keep me a slave to conventional processes. I want to know exactly what I'm dealing with and looking at. All plants require those things to grow and produce. 

I've been doing some major experiments with cover crops to boost nitrogen levels for one ,being able to track those results would help reduce the amount of inputs  coming in on trucks at ever rising rates.
I aim to grow the best sweet corn around on very few if any inputs as far as fertilizer. 

[mike_belben]

Well there is definitely a strong dispute out there.. One side says just buy more NPK.  

The other side says (if im remembering this right) ammonium nitrate isnt plant soluble until xyz microbes convert it, and that soil biology is killed off by the dessicant nature of synthetic fertilizers.  I really dont know how it works.  

I think to make a large scale change at once will require radical alterations, and it might be easier choosing the worst performing segments of the land at a time to take out of rotation and heavily ammend then leave fallow for a period. 


You might wanna call ken hamilton at bio mineral technologies and get a price per acre for his remedial bacteria elixir and see how it compares to npk.. Maybe its cost competitive enough to give it a try. NPK keeps rising.  If the organic voodoo is real theres money to be made switching sooner than later 

[newoodguy78]

That's what we've done with some of the worst pieces is tried cover crop and other organic practices the results have been nothing but success. I absolutely don't want to simply buy more NPK, everything I've seen so far tells me that's the wrong move.
I know next to nothing about soil biology, however it's my understanding higher organic matter percentages help bind nutrients in the soil so plants can use them easier and faster. I've seen the results in increasing OM content already and wil continue working on improving them , my next goal is increasing nitrogen levels naturally via cover crops,what compost I can produce and manure that can be scrounged. That much less needing to be bought in.
The very premise of what commercial farming and what we're trying to do here is unnatural in my opinion....trying to produce a mono crop. They simply don't exist in nature on their own. Just my opinion but I feel the closer we work with nature versus against it the better off this place will be. Massive slugs of NPK applied once or twice a year aren't natural.
By no means was my earlier post meant to be belittling of what you're accomplishing, quite the contrary. It's simply hard to be as intensive as you have been around here, there's simply not time.
Keep up the good work 👍

[Southside]

See if you can find Jessica Smith or Daniel Kline. My old emails from them come from Grow Food Nation. They are into produce production and think along our lines. I attended a seminar they put on a few years ago and quite a few years back one of their associates helped me in Maine with micro nutrients, soil health, etc, so they are around. 

[Southside]

Could you get some ruminants to run on the ground from late fall until spring? That Sorghum crop followed by a winter rye and some hay would do well and recycle nutrients.

[newoodguy78]

I'll try to find those folks. 
The ruminant idea is the ideal situation specifically the bovine variety in my opinion. With proper planning and planting of things feeding 10-12 animals on crops I'm currently bushhogging with minimal supplemental feeding is not out of the question.
I'm not quite ready to cross that bridge with the boss yet, might just get her ponytail sticking out straight  ;D.
If it were my property and made the final decision they'd already be here ;)

[Southside]

If they aren't feeding a calf or going into the parlor each day a couple hours on the green forage and then the rest from some good hay would do just fine, that would become additional manure and nutrients for the soil and stretch out your winter cover crop feeding.  Basically creep feed them across the field as you go advancing a hot wire each day.  The good thing is you could pick up weanlings cheap in the fall and sell them higher in the spring.  

I would stay away from steers though, they are the hardest class to make gain on.  Heifers would be a great fit.  

[mike_belben]

(...)By no means was my earlier post meant to be belittling of what you're accomplishing (...)

No worries brotato what im doing is smaller than little!   Just a homeschool sorta thing really. 
I know a guy with a decent amount of cows in ludlow that may be interested in grazing it if you get a fence.  
Once upon a time argentina was known for the worlds best grass fed steak.  I guess they ran crops a few years then cattle a few years and rotated like that.
had excellent pasture.   The story goes that America being their biggest customer and always wanting more of a good thing, we convinced them to feed grain and ruined a good thing.  No idea if its true, argentina is a bit far for me to fact check. 

[newoodguy78]

This is something that really needs to be considered. Never really considered grazing them through the winter months. Have thought a fair amount about feeding a bunch through the winter, moving the feeder around the field as a manure spreader so to speak.
What do you feel would be the ideal mix of forage to plant would be?

[mike_belben]

Kale, forage radish, rutabega, turnips..  Theyll all put out high protein greens then leave a root bulb to dig up for winter. I think chicory might too.  Thats a lot of trampling and soil disturbance you dont have to pay for. 

Winter wheat and crimson clover did good for me thru winter also.   

[Southside]

I would mix spring oats, Abruzzi Rye, Australian Winter Peas, forage raddish, together, plant it in late August, by November it's well established and ready to graze. You already know what Sorghum and Buckwheat will do and that would get you through until November. 

Grass hay fed on a hay wagon moving across the fields daily will spread manure and reduce waste and pugging. Strip graze a new green section each day or two, enough for 3 to 4 hours, and hay for the balance. A 500 lb weanling needs about 17 lbs of dry matter intake per day, so a 700 lb round bale will feed 40 head a day by itself. Double that when strip grazing the forage. 

[newoodguy78]

This definitely has my wheels turning.

[farmfromkansas]

We had a fire a couple days ago too, baler had a bearing go out and started a small fire, which soon became a big fire.  Luckily we are only a little more than a mile from the fire department, and they came out and stopped it from getting to the neighbor's property. Also lucky the baler had just been cleaned out, and did not have a lot of hay buildup inside.  And we had a fire extinguisher. Still lost a good 20 acres of bales and windrows.  My insurance agent said she would check to see if I have fire coverage on my policy.  It did not cover theft of my stuff. We tore the baler apart that evening and got it put back together yesterday by 4:30, and went to do a little more baling.  Finished up this morning. I was driving the tractor with the rake, and tried to rake the fire out when it was small, but did not succeed.  When the fire truck first got there and sprayed the fire, he moved down the line and the fire jumped right back up.  Didn't get it under control till they had 3 trucks spraying it down, and a few guys with rakes putting the windrows out.  We had to stay and make 2 bales burn up before we dared leave.  5x6 round bales.
'

[mike_belben]

 :-\man that sucks, sorry to hear.  Glad no one injured though

[Southside]

They sure take off fast.  Glad to hear you got the baler back up and running.  Frame members on mine were bowed from the heat, no fixing that.  

[farmfromkansas]

Thinking about buying some boxes of donuts and taking them to the next meeting the fire department has.  Could have been a LOT worse.

[mike_belben]

Turned the garden today to plant fall greens soon.  Pretty good idea of what i started with vs where ive gotten to.  






The soft black stuff goes down maybe 10 inches now. That seems to be the promise of aerobic microbial activity. The sandy yellow clay is rock hard when it isnt saturated. 

[moodnacreek]

We sure don't have that dirt here. Very little sand, too much clay often with large stone or mixed with gravel. North of here you start to see some sand and pine. What kind of trees like your soil? Seems like you have all hardwoods. Some parts of Tenn. where noted for e.r.c. growth. Here that would be lime stone ridges mostly. To improve worn out soil I can only vision manure and plowing under. No education. It's hard when you know everything :D

[Roxie]

We've got your limestone base and ERC up here in such quantity, that less than a mile from me is a section called the Barrens where nothing but ERC grows. It also produces the most beautiful green boulders.

Don't quote me on this because I'm no expert but I have read that this type of limestone shelf was previously ocean front property.

[mike_belben]

Im no geologist but ive hauled and stacked enough sandstone to be curious and would guess youre correct roxie.  Theres a lot of sandstone quarries around montrose PA.  Lot of the banks along 81 have smooth stone sheet slopes.   Those sandstones always start flat like lakebeds when the grains of sand, quartz and silica that flow in downpours and mudslides fill in holes as they settle out where waters slow. Sorta like gold panning.   They harden into flat sheets and the sheet thickness tells the size of the storm event.   For those huge flat sheets to be intact and at a 45° pitch means one end somehow got many many feet higher than sea level because its impossible for the sand granules to stop on a slope like that in a downpour. 

[mike_belben]

Doug my immediate area is predominant hardwood, white and various red oaks, hickories, red maple, black gum, dogwood, sourwood, beech, yellow poplar, a touch of locust walnut cherry on some sites but mine doesnt support those.  Ive seen a swamp sycamore and maybe a few ash but very rare.  I could maybe grow virginia pine in the woods if i kept it in full sun (same with cherry) but i really cant grow erc.  One ERC sapling gets started and becomes a favorite buck rub as soon as its chest high.


Our entire plateau is a few thousand feet of sandstone.  The eastern half more sandstone, the western rim turns to limestone.  Our sand is called "pennsylvanian era" in geology talk.  The clay is orangey from iron i guess.  Lots of areas are so rocky they only grow a poor wild trash pine. If you have oaks youve got atleast a foot of clay based dirt and organic overburden sitting ontop the thousands of feet of solid rock.  From monterey to livingston on the western rim is good conditions for ERC and little else.  Lots of limestone surface boulder with cedar poking out.  Be hell to harvest it. 


We really dont have pebbly gravels except in the gulches and gorges where water beat stones round, and it is sold often.   Our driveway gravels come from rogers group or vulcan materials cutting off the sides of limestone mountains and crushing/screening.  Somehow one of the quarry operators got sandstone to pass the engineering test for a building gravel so now all the quarry tailings, trimmings and rubble is crushed and screened for driveways too but its not near as durable as limestone.. Ignorance makes the price the same now, sandstone was your cheap logging or farm road material prior to certification.  

With your type of soil i wouldnt bother turning it.  I would build new dirt on top of it.  Get all the woodchip, bark, grass, landscaper leaves, rotten hay, straw and free clay you can have delivered.  Thats the bug food.   Now toss on some punky spongey oak debris and  hose it down in manure. Theres your innoculant. Microbes and bacteria.  Keep them happy and they will make dirt out of that layer in a year. Never see the gravels again. You could do this on a basketball court.  

Every so often let it go completely fallow and grow any weeds shrubs or sapplings it wants.  They are bringing the missing ground minerals up to the surface.  Chip/grind that growth and turn it back in before winter.