Building organic matter

WI hunter

A good 3 year old buck
I'm working on a new 4000 sq foot plot that has and organic matter of 1.8% and CEC of 1.8. This is central Wisconsin sandy soil. I was wondering if I got some bails of hay/straw, I'm not sure which one it is, that were from an oats field last year and till that in. Would that help to get the organic matter up, or is there something better? The ph is only 5.2 so its going to take some lime as well. The plan is then to plant oats or buckwheat to help the soil. I appreciate your help guys!

Peter
 
I can't answer your question about the organic matter from the straw but I'd sure plant the buckwheat or an oats and annual clover combination to get both deer food and green manure in the works. Sounds like a nice plan.
 
Plant stuff and don't till or minimize tillage. Buckwheat, Winter Rye, clover, and many other crops help with building OM. Crops like Groundhog Radish provide "organic tillage" in a way that adds OM without burning it like with mechanical tillage. If you really get into building OM, you can think of your field as a compost pile. When you compost, you balance "greens" and "browns" (which is actually Carbon and Nitrogen). The idea with composting is to encourage fermentation not putrefaction. For building OM, you also want to balance Carbon and Nitrogen. Dgallow used to have long posts about this on the old forum. He talked about a balance between legumes and grasses.

Thanks,

Jack
 
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I plan on using a minimal amount of till, like hopefully once to mix in the lime. Then I plan on doing throw n mow.
 
I wouldn't even till in the lime or if I did, I'd use a tiller lifted high so it only hits the top inch of soil. Lime will slowly move through the soil. Most of the crops you will plant to improve OM will tolerate poor pH and infertility.

Thanks,

Jack
 
I'd spread 3 bags of coarse dolomitic lime and half a bag of 10-10-10. Immediately plant a blend of barley, buckwheat, and cowpeas. Only scratch it up enough to set your seed. On August 1st, broadcast winter rye and the other half of your fertilizer bag into it and then mow it all down on top of it and walk away.

Let your rye go all the way to setting seed the following year and repeat with something similar. But keep producing high carbon crops like grains. What you see above ground is what you'll be getting below ground, and that's where OM happens.

What's growing there now?
 
Right now whats growing is some winter rye that we planted last year with throw and mow. The results were not great, but the deer are eating it.

Peter
 
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Well we limed yesterday and then actually got more rain then they said we would, about 3+ hours worth. So its a step in the right direction.
 
I've become a big fan of the Green Cover Seed website. They offer quite a variety of seed but I what I really like about the site is their SmartMix calculator.
It asks some specific questions about your planting method and planting dates, zip code, follow-up crop, acreage. And it also asks to prioritize 3 goals, and building organic matter is one of the choices it gives. The next page will give dozens and dozens of seed choices and will rate them from excellent to good to marginal. And as you plug-in a different seed, it shows a scale that changes to show how your choices effect your stated goals . The calculator also gives seeding rates based on the planting method. It'll also calculate the price for the seed you'd need including the shipping cost.
I'm telling you guys...That SmartMix Calculator is really cool, but it can be an addictive time vacuum. It'll open your mind to plant some stuff that you never considered, or even heard of, for that matter.
https://smartmix.greencoverseed.com
 
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Soil organic matter is probably one of my top ten curiosities. I have this debate with myself about the efficiency of attempts to build it in a short time. No doubt many have successfully discovered and executed successful strategies, but it's a seriously deep art & science requiring a substantial commitment. It's the numbers I find daunting. I started scratching on a napkin, but, rather than sharing that addition and subtraction, I'll provide this neat little summary I found here:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_053264.pdf

"An acre of soil 6 inches (15.2 cm) deep weighs approximately 2,000,000 pounds, which means that 1 percent SOM weighs about 20,000 pounds per acre. Under average conditions it takes at least 10 pounds of organic material to decompose into 1 pound of organic matter, so it takes at least 200,000 pounds (100 tons) of organic material applied or returned to the soil to add 1 percent stable organic matter under favorable conditions (“What Does Organic Matter Do In Soil”, Funderburg 2001, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation)."

After that sinks-in, managing (to keep) what you already have become job number one.
 
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Soil organic matter is probably one of my top ten curiosities. I have this debate with myself about the efficiency of attempts to build it in a short time. No doubt many have successfully discovered and executed successful strategies, but it's a seriously deep art & science requiring a substantial commitment. It's the numbers I find daunting. I started scratching on a napkin, but, rather than sharing that addition and subtraction, I'll provide this neat little summary I found here:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_053264.pdf

"An acre of soil 6 inches (15.2 cm) deep weighs approximately 2,000,000 pounds, which means that 1 percent SOM weighs about 20,000 pounds per acre. Under average conditions it takes at least 10 pounds of organic material to decompose into 1 pound of organic matter, so it takes at least 200,000 pounds (100 tons) of organic material applied or returned to the soil to add 1 percent stable organic matter under favorable conditions (“What Does Organic Matter Do In Soil”, Funderburg 2001, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation)."

After that sinks-in, managing (to keep) what you already have become job number one.

Agree completely. I don't think soil building can be done fast. I see it as more of a sustainability practice. For those of us doing scale QDM, I see this as a way to improve nutrient cycling and reduce input costs. I'm looking at building OM as the result of many years of sustainable QDM practices rather than a short term fix.

Thanks,

Jack
 
I'll share what my father and I did over a period of 25 years with a large vegetable garden we worked together.

We planted 12 dozen tomato plants each year and rather than stake them, Dad told me to scatter straw around and under the tomato plants as they began to tip over. He told me to make it about 8" deep all through the tomatoes. This was to keep the tomatoes from laying on the soil & they ripened on top of the straw.

What we noticed was that after the straw had decayed into the soil, the following spring when we ran the rototiller through that same area, the soil broke up really well and was deep and " fluffy ". The soil became really easy to work and it retained moisture better than some of the other areas that had more clayish type soil. The clayish areas dried out and baked like rock in summer.

I don't recall Dad ever mentioning building OM in the garden. He just wanted to keep the tomatoes up off the ground to ripen rather than stake 144 tomato plants. Maybe you ag guys can explain what happened in our garden soil - even though our adding straw wasn't to increase OM as a goal. Did we achieve more OM by accident ?? I honestly don't understand the scientific processes by which you add/increase OM. I just know adding OM is a very good thing to do.
 
I don't know exactly what happened to your garden soil. The bales of straw had potential to improve the organic matter, but maybe it did, maybe it didn't. The structure of certain soils can be improved by adding amendments. Before thinking about straw as organic matter, think about it as an amendment. Mixing the straw with soil has the potential to improve soil structure. Plant growth requires space between the soil particles, space for water and air -- not too much nor too little. Clay's are very tight. Mixing in straw has potential to keep clay particles separated, a structural improvement. Straw can also increase organic matter, surely. There are two reasons why the straw probably provide minimal increase in organic matter. The first is the quantity used. i don't know how many used nor the sq feet in the garden. Let's assume each tomato plant occupied 25 sq ft (5 x 5). The garden had 144 plants. So, the garden (remember, these are just assumptions) is 144 multiplied by 25 = 3600 sq ft. If you put down 10 - 40lb bales of straw -- that (in a perfect world), added a little less than 400 lbs of OM a year. The soil in the garden weighs about 200-thousand pounds (a tenth of an acre at 2-million pounds an acre). More math - 400 divided by 200-thousand is a maximum possible OM contribution of 0.2% a year. In the long haul, it can be a valuable contribution.

Here's the problem. Tillage. One year the straw goes in the ground. The next year it comes back up via the rototiller. Air destroys organic matter. I don't know at what rate. The tillage also helps increase soil pore space as it loosen things, but, again, at the expense of OM loss.

I have a friend who loves to see the soil fly. He runs a disc across his plots. Then he roto-tills. And repeats as he sees fit. The soil is light and fluffy and very plantable, but he's burning OM. The good news is nothing plant related leaves the field. Plants grow. Plants die. Plants get returned to the soil - unlike production agriculture where a lot of OM gets harvested and transferred to your dinner plate.

After all that, I guess i don't know the answer to your question either!
 
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