Soil fundamentals library

Curious if this coming from farm fields not using no till.
 
Got a farmer friend in western KS. When neighbors till it eventually blows and drifts dunes onto his fields. Makes them bumpy and hell to drive a tractor on. Drives him nuts!
 
You should see the ditch grass along I-29 in North Dakota. A lot of that topsoil settles in the ditch and when we get rain, it’s outstanding.


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I just started this book - it’s a series of books on microbes, nutrients and now fungi. So far - it’s an extremely good refresher on fungi - I suspect it’ll get complex and I’ll learn as much as I can absorb and some will be over my head. All in all - this author is worth considering.

Have a great day everyone.

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Happy Peak Biological Nutrient Accumulation Day all you goofy regen'ers.

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Happy Peak Biological Nutrient Accumulation Day all you weirdos. Hope you've all got air, water, and moisture, and may the system do the rest.

I don't have a peak pic yet. Might get out there sunday to look around. I've swung from the driest I've ever been to the wettest I've ever been in two months. Looking forward to seeing the landscape.
 
SD I am curious do you believe that all this rain could have germinated seeds from past seedings or would they have burried to deep
 
SD I am curious do you believe that all this rain could have germinated seeds from past seedings or would they have burried to deep
Any change in conditions will bring different things to life. I'm not sure if you're talking past food plot seeds, or wild cards from the seed bank. I haven't seen horsetail in three years, and now it's everywhere because of the water. I've never had daisey and hawkweed, it's showed up now. None of them really bother me at this point. I think they'll all go away when conditions return to something closer to normal as long as I let the system keep advancing.

The only thing that still seems to get worse over time is grass. I haven't had a broadleaf become a problem over time.
 
Happy Peak Biological Nutrient Accumulation Day all you weirdos. Hope you've all got air, water, and moisture, and may the system do the rest.

I don't have a peak pic yet. Might get out there sunday to look around. I've swung from the driest I've ever been to the wettest I've ever been in two months. Looking forward to seeing the landscape.

I don’t have air. Holy piss it’s wet. Good thing that clover seems to handle it pretty well.
 
As promised, the trophy pics from Peak BNAD.

38” balansa w/@$$hole vetch.

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Forage collards growing out the top of a round bale.

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This one ain’t so glorious, but it is. This is over the top of a 7’ deep trench filled with logs and stumps and pure clay from last summer. I gave it some gypsum and a light coat of that rotten bale grass to cover the seed. The rye said no way Frank. But the YSC made it thru.

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This section was planted in the fall of 2019. It is a blend of white, red, alfalfa, chicory, plantain, buttercup and a few more. I’d count BFTF (trefoil) but I couldn’t find it in this pic. There’s probably black eyed Susan coming yet.

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Found a good talk on soil air from a name I'd not seen mentioned yet. Glen Rabenberg from eastern South Dakota. There's quite a bit of info in this one that's not been mentioned anywhere else I've seen. One tidbit I picked up was an association between foxtail and compaction, thistle and compaction, and compaction and low calcium. There in lies the connection between gypsum and compaction. Lots of talk about penetrometers. I'm somewhat curious about what my soils would show using a penetrometer, but I'm not $200 curious. I know I've got some where that thing wouldn't go a few inches, and others I think might go quite deep.

Anyway, if you are a nerd, this is a good watch. Well produced, good speaker, good info.

 
SD. What a video. Horse tails and thistle are showing a lack of ph mining it back up. For $200 you gain a lot of knowledge for 200 psi. I guess my biggest question is compaction of soil and soil microbes as the video ended. Please explain
 
SD. What a video. Horse tails and thistle are showing a lack of ph mining it back up. For $200 you gain a lot of knowledge for 200 psi. I guess my biggest question is compaction of soil and soil microbes as the video ended. Please explain
As soils are compacted - or not flocculated due to inadequate CA base saturations, you can reduce air and water flow in the soil. This is why often when liming we focus on PH but should also look at Ca to Mg base saturations for chemical soil structure. As we have better chemical structure of soils, and use processes that’ll stimulate good biology - you’ll also see better soil aggregation and increases in soil aggregation.

Neil Kinsey and Dr. William Albretch are great resources for this info as well.

Hope this helps.
 
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As soils are compacted - or not flocculated due to inadequate CA base saturations, you can reduce air and water flow in the soil. This is why often when liming we focus on PH but should also look at Ca to Mg base saturations for chemical soil structure. As we have better chemical structure of soils, and use processes that’ll stimulate good biology - you’ll also see better soil aggregation and increases in soil aggregation.

Neil Kinsey and Dr. William Albretch are great resources for this info as well.

Hope this helps.
HOPE THIS HELPS? Yeah....helps to confuse me more and more. I'm still at NPK and Organic Matter and Acidity. You guys are about two light years ahead of my brain on these issues. Fascinating stuff....but one can only can absorb so much at a time. Will any of this stuff be in the test? grin.
 
HOPE THIS HELPS? Yeah....helps to confuse me more and more. I'm still at NPK and Organic Matter and Acidity. You guys are about two light years ahead of my brain on these issues. Fascinating stuff....but one can only can absorb so much at a time. Will any of this stuff be in the test? grin.
The test comes when the conditions slip away from favorable.
 
As soils are compacted - or not flocculated due to inadequate CA base saturations, you can reduce air and water flow in the soil. This is why often when liming we focus on PH but should also look at Ca to Mg base saturations for chemical soil structure. As we have better chemical structure of soils, and use processes that’ll stimulate good biology - you’ll also see better soil aggregation and increases in soil aggregation.

Neil Kinsey and Dr. William Albretch are great resources for this info as well.

Hope this helps.
gypsum is a many splendored thing.......

bill
 
gypsum is a many splendored thing.......

bill
It’s fantastic. I recall reading about Ben Franklin using it on his alfalfa. He recorded the alfalfa seemed “sweeter” for this cattle. Likely this was due to the clay flocculation and allowing for alfalfa to increase rooting depth. Better CA uptake and microbial flow through the soil profile. Atleast that’s my guess!!

If we continue to look at soils in three parts (chemical, biological and physical) then try to draw correlations between these- the entire idea of soils (imo) is way easier to digest and understand.

Hope this helps!

-Albert
 
Found a good talk on soil air from a name I'd not seen mentioned yet. Glen Rabenberg from eastern South Dakota. There's quite a bit of info in this one that's not been mentioned anywhere else I've seen. One tidbit I picked up was an association between foxtail and compaction, thistle and compaction, and compaction and low calcium. There in lies the connection between gypsum and compaction. Lots of talk about penetrometers. I'm somewhat curious about what my soils would show using a penetrometer, but I'm not $200 curious. I know I've got some where that thing wouldn't go a few inches, and others I think might go quite deep.

Anyway, if you are a nerd, this is a good watch. Well produced, good speaker, good info.


So uh.. till a bunch so you get air in the soil?

I try to plan things with root systems to help with compaction and stay off it when its wet but other than that, it seems like tillage (preferably vertical?) is what he's getting at?
 
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