Soil health mixes to help clay soils

[bigboreblr]

Folks like green cover make something to help clay soils in particular. Something deep rooted. PErhaps without daikon radish. MY wife hates the smell when it rots.

I alternate what years I harvest at home. Im due for a break here. So, less attractive forage options would be ok. Also adding more size to the plot this fall.

 

[Stubborn1VT]

I'm using winter rye, buckwheat and sunflowers to break up clay soil and add organic matter.

 

[SD51555]

Folks like green cover make something to help clay soils in particular. Something deep rooted. PErhaps without daikon radish. MY wife hates the smell when it rots.

I alternate what years I harvest at home. Im due for a break here. So, less attractive forage options would be ok. Also adding more size to the plot this fall.

Biggest thing is to create no additional compaction with tiling or spraying. Second would be keeping green plants on it year round.

Ive farmed in deep pure clay on my place, and got it turned around: white clover, flax, chicory, Japanese millet, sweet clovers. Those give you a diversity of roots. Clover is fine, shallow, and abundant. Flax is medium and goes straight down. Chicory is thick and goes deep. Sweet clovers do a combo of all of that. Jap millet also helps with shallow abundance.

Last thing, get some gypsum on there.


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[bigboreblr]

What is recommended for gypsum and acte?

 

[RGrizzzz]

Something like this is rated very good for deep compaction.

Warm Season Soil Builder

Our Warm Season Soil Builder Mix includes over 14 different species designed for improving organic matter and controlling weeds. This diverse blend of legumes, grasses, brassicas, and broadleaves all work in synergy to build soil. Legumes convert nitrogen in the atmosphere and make it available...

store.greencover.com

 

[Telemark]

Something like this is rated very good for deep compaction.

Warm Season Soil Builder

Our Warm Season Soil Builder Mix includes over 14 different species designed for improving organic matter and controlling weeds. This diverse blend of legumes, grasses, brassicas, and broadleaves all work in synergy to build soil. Legumes convert nitrogen in the atmosphere and make it available...

store.greencover.com

Looks like a great.mix. Could've Used some colors other than grey and green, though.

 

[SD51555]

What is recommended for gypsum and acte?

I’d want to see a soil test before saying. That way you could know what you can put on. Safe place to start would be 1/2 ton per acre and see what happens. I’d like to leave myself some room to do that for up to 3 years without getting too high of calcium.


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[RGrizzzz]

I’d want to see a soil test before saying. That way you could know what you can put on. Safe place to start would be 1/2 ton per acre and see what happens. I’d like to leave myself some room to do that for up to 3 years without getting too high of calcium.


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Do you suggest tilling it in? If yes, why not one application after a soil test?

 

[bigboreblr]

Thought my calcium was high already. Need to retest. Think last test was 2 years ago.

 

[SD51555]

Do you suggest tilling it in? If yes, why not one application after a soil test?

I wouldn't till it in. Calcium is predisposed to work it's way down into the soil over time. I like spreading it out so you can get the benefit out of the sulfate portion of the gypsum too.

 

[farmlegend]

Folks like green cover make something to help clay soils in particular. Something deep rooted. PErhaps without daikon radish. MY wife hates the smell when it rots.

I alternate what years I harvest at home. Im due for a break here. So, less attractive forage options would be ok. Also adding more size to the plot this fall.

There are a LOT of recommended cover crop/food plot seeds that produce good roots that don't grow very well on my greasy (this time of year) clayish dirt. Among them are radishes, peas, buckwheat, oats, most brassicas, most chicories, blackoil sunflowers, sunn hemp, and more. Read the descriptions - most seeds prefer "well drained soil", something in short supply at my place.

Winners on clayish dirt include plantain, wheat, cereal rye, triticale, most white clovers, medium red clover, Japanese millet, off the top of my head.

Many of the seeds preferring well-drained soil can grow pretty well on clay if you happen to get goldilocks growing conditions after planting (not to dry, not too wet, not too warm, not too cold,....just right).

If you're able to find someone to spread gypsum on your ground, that would be outstanding. I eventually gave up on it.

 

[bigboreblr]

Plantain naturally grows in my plot. I dug a drainage channel more of less in the middle.

Have a bit of moss in the plot. Red aromatherapy has been a battle too.

Going to camp this upcoming weekend. Getting soil samples. Will add a sample of my ho.e plot to the order. Dairy one in ny used to do pH only for cheap, all I need at camp. Thinking of trying penn state 10 bucks a sample.

 

[SD51555]

If you really want a top notch bore hole cover crop, spread thistle seed out there. Canada and bull are rock stars for reclaiming clay.

Dead serious. If you have not read my take on thistle, find it.




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[farmlegend]

If you really want a top notch bore hole cover crop, spread thistle seed out there. Canada and bull are rock stars for reclaiming clay.

Dead serious. If you have not read my take on thistle, find it.




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It's interesting how nature can work with you when you stop your foreverwars with certain forbs.

I learned this from your post on thistle, SD, and have observed it all over the landscape since - the ONLY places where "weeds"(forbs) like canada thistle and others appear in great abundance....are places where I have created disturbances by tilling, planting, mowing, etc. to plant other things and to fight those godawful weeds. Fighting canada thistle is a hamster wheel that you cannot win, long term, by spraying and mowing.

Similar with marestail and curly dock. All of those forbs put out really impressive rootage. And all are very very minor components of my farm landscape, EXCEPT where I have disturbed things by planting and maintaining food plots. In the case of the marestail that came out of nowhere to take over 29 acres of fresh NWSG planting performed on bare, burned down dirt, just leaving it be and allowing for the passage of time and other things to grow along with it caused the marestail to essentially disappear within three years.

 

[bigboreblr]

Ragweed is pretty good too.

Always wanted to try sun hemp.

 

[farmlegend]

Ragweed is pretty good too.

Always wanted to try sun hemp.

My experience with Sunn Hemp, planted it as part of a cover crop mix in 2022-2024:

One year, it came up OK, but never really thrived. Was easy to find with its yellow blooms. Got knee-high.
Another year, it barely came up, hard to find.
The other year it made no appearance at all; excessively wet early in the growing season waterlogged it.

I have a good friend with similar dirt, a ways northwest of me, likewise had poor results, probably worse than mine.

Another acquaintance 15 miles south of me regularly grows pure stands of Sunn Hemp as a cover crop, it grows thick and 5' tall. He has markedly lighter dirt than I do.

 

[SD51555]

Ragweed is pretty good too.

Always wanted to try sun hemp.

I put a pound of ragweed seed on every new plot I build.


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[SD51555]

My experience with Sunn Hemp, planted it as part of a cover crop mix in 2022-2024:

One year, it came up OK, but never really thrived. Was easy to find with its yellow blooms. Got knee-high.
Another year, it barely came up, hard to find.
The other year it made no appearance at all; excessively wet early in the growing season waterlogged it.

I have a good friend with similar dirt, a ways northwest of me, likewise had poor results, probably worse than mine.

Another acquaintance 15 miles south of me regularly grows pure stands of Sunn Hemp as a cover crop, it grows thick and 5' tall. He has markedly lighter dirt than I do.

I tried it last year. Same result. It germinated, but it never took off in a big way, and that was planted in mid June.


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