That’s good stuff. I align with your thoughts exactly.
You could sum up my core focus in all of this on mycorhizal fungi. If your #1 focus is fostering or at least not harming your myco fungi, you're gonna be in good shape. The transitions from season to season and timing are still tricky, and I haven't aced that yet, so I usually end up with too much clover and too few cereal grains. The core of my pursuit of flail mowing has been to get a stiff crop of cereals up through my clover in August without having to kill anything.
I have a plot that I planted durana and chicory in. The durana was planted in 2019 and has done well for how poor my soil is. It does go dormant around June-July and pops back up around the end of October. I broadcasted chicory into this same plot last year and it did better than I expected, even with the deer hammering it last winter. It never went dormant all summer this year and it has been a very hot, dry summer. Super impressed with how it's done. I plan to broadcast more chicory and durana soon into this plot. You can tell the durana is on it's last legs. I do not crimp this plot. I simply broadcast WR and WW every fall and chicory and durana when needed, then mow the WR and WW sometime during the summer. I get a good bit of ragweed in this specific plot too that the deer hammer. So I try to mow the plot in late summer right before I am going to plant. I just dont see the point in mowing down free food for wildlife, especially if they're gobbling it up. I have never thought of adding chicory to the plots I crimp, due to me terminating the plots every fall and spring. Would the crimper kill the chicory? Would the chicory roots have enough time to get deep enough in the soil if the crimper does terminate it?
I actually did lime these plots this year. Did a ton to 1.5 tons per acre. I try to lime every year to 2 years. Would lime affect the soil biology like fertilizer does?
That plot looks great bud! Lots of biomass! Going to see what my chances are of getting this mixture locally. Milo, millet and CP I know I can get. Not sure on the sorghum x sudan and sunn hemp.
Change in a positive or negative way?
For the good. When you asked that a few days ago, I did some savvy googling to see if any research had been done on it. The type of fungi you have in your soil will shift from something I can't remember, to mycorhizal. It's not that there isn't already mycorhizal fungi in the soil, but they'll have far more room to roam once the whole soil column is raised, vs just around root tips.
In other words, I should lime every year instead of every other year. Like you, I dread lime work. Lol Going to try inoculating my seed with compost and see what happens. Can't hurt
Either way should be fine.
Drill baby drill. ;)
That is because herbicides are excluded. Food plotters have the better option of no-till/min-till since we are free to rotate herbicides for burn down, and after that, many weeds are as beneficial to deer as the crops we plant. Some of the techniques apply well to us, but with different goals and objective, others don't.
Another way is a diverse green bridge. It's funny, in agriculture, there's a faction that insists on maintaining a green bridge with cover crops, like most important thing in their soil plan. And there's a group (like these guys) that absolutely insist the green bridge must be destroyed no matter the cost.
