low tech medium scale alfalfa seed harvesting

I am very fond of doing experiments. Not that I have anything of your scale. But it seems like you just want anything to grow, so that it can enrich the soil with organic matter. Nitrogen fixation plants of course gives extra benefits. I would try a lot of variety. Why not sow mixtures of different seeds and try different varieties on some plots? Then you will learn what things will thrive.

karsan

Thanks again for the suggestions. I'll check out the book, find more info on carbonaceous crops, and the effects of tilling on organic matter. Gotta run to make a living! Test plots are something I do have planned for the future, but right now I think I have to make the whole place better. Steve L. , your encouragement that I'm heading in the right general direction is appreciated Scotty

Scotty-

I'm a wanna be farmer & planted 'hairy vetch' as a green manure. So don't yet know how it will do but supposed to be great for N TX.

Just wanted to say please don't use a NON-organic fertilizer. A great thing to do & pretty cheap is a gallon of liquid molasses per acre-feed grade, you get it at the feed store. Dilute it w/water to streatch over an acre. This brings back the soil microbes that you need.

Go on this great website & check out the library for info. www.dirtdoctor.com

good luck-

Patty

__________________
My book is out! Go 'like' it on FB:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Goo...83553391747680

http://attra.ncat.org/images/soilmgmt/figure4.jpg

http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/soi.../fbe01s09a.jpg

And, for a little balance, you might want to look at this site - http://froebuck.home.texas.net/toppage6.htm

Scotty, I just spent a little time talking with one of the Cornell researchers who has done some work on cover crops. For bio-mass production, he recommends sorghum/Sudex/sudan grass, but doesn't think you'll be able to get a legume to do well in association with it. He'd like to see you go with a grass and clover, maybe coarse fescue and red clover. The clover should cost less than $5/acre. He also recommends more than one growing season.

Also, birdsfoot trefoil is more acid tolerant than alfalfa, but you won't get as much bio-mass accumulation with it, either. My father has had good luck with trefoil/bromegrass, but he's on a better soil.

That would be just mowing it down or grazing it off, correct? No plowing it under?

Depends on what you want to do after the 'soil building' stage. On sand, I'd try to not ever mouldboard plow. (Though I'm probably gonna plow down a couple of acres of my own, in a year or two.)

I just looked at those two links, dcross. I didn't realize that I was so smart!! I thought I just making this stuff up!!!

I have read about the loss of OM from tillage, but don't understand the mechanism through which that occurs. Something I remember from yeara ago about "matter cannot be created or destroyed, only changesd in form". So where does the matter go......certaintly, it doesn't gas off ?????
Scotty

Areation. That's why sand loses OM so fast. When you're making compost, which pile decomposes faster - the one that's turned regularly, or the one that isn't?

Yes, it does "gas off". Look up 'carbon cycle'.

That's the first law of thermodynamics,

http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/...BookEner1.html


When you till, you're creating a mixture of plant residue, soil, and air. Essentially a very rapid compost pile.

Much of the carbon is lost to the air(CO2) and can then be taken in by other plants.

Well, I'm back. I've spent quite a bit of time on the farm this past month. Fixing tractors, discs, grain drills and yes, even getting to use them.

Here's what's happened so far:

They finally spread the wet lime at a little greater than 1T/acre. I disced the field (one pass) to try to work it in as well as incorporate last years bad bean crop..

The next week they spread regular chem fertilizer and that weekend (and Monday, and Tuesday) I disced the field twice with a spike tooth drag behind the disc to help level the seed bed. Then I drilled oats and orchard grass with a couple pounds /acre of white clover. My drill is an ancient one with high steel wheels - it took some work and fixing to get it to do the job. Thankfully, little brother is a welder and only lives 15 miles from the farm.

Now, three weeks later, the oats are up and looking good at about 6" high.

I realize my course of action so far isin't the most "organic minded", but it was what I was comfortable with that was likely to yield a reasonable stand of orchard grass. Orchard grass is something I can clip and should increase the OM over time while I work on the big picture plan. The goal is to become "organic" over time.

The big picture plan is to break up the farm into seven 3.5 acre plots. These plots form the rotatation plan. Grass/legume mixtures will be the predominant crop most of the time on each plot. Other crops/green manures will be rotated in and out of the plots as time, money and reasonable actions allow.

Next week, I'm going to disc up one plot and plant Reid's yellow dent open pollinated corn. I'll use no herbicides, but will do a preemergent cultivation with a rotary hoe, followed by regular cultivation after the corn is big enough. The plan is to undersow a legume after the last cultivation. My cultivator has provisions (hoses) for adding ammonia while cultivating. I'm going to look into a liquid organic fertilizer to run through the hoses....

Looking for input on this - what legume? I like what I read about hairy vetch, but am a bit concerned about 1) how much this will pull H20 and other nutrients away from the corn, and 2) will this hairy vetch get in the way of my new-to me- one row pull behind corn picker at harvest time?

This years corn plot may be made into an alfalfa plot next year? Maybe something else?

This late summer/early fall, I'll take another 3.5 acre plot and plant a legume, probably H. vetch, and alow it to over-winter, to be disced in as green manure in the late spring. This will be next years corn plot.


I've done a bit of reading (thanks to you folks for the direction) about OM and tillage. It has been an education, and added some confusion. I understand the effect of tillage in allowing the OM to oxidize. I also understand that up to 10% of the organic material, when tilled in will become organic matter. So mathematicly, we have a build-up and a decay problem occurring at the same. What I don't know is which one is greater - the buildup of OM by tilling in green manures, or the decay of OM increased by the tillage.

I'm gearing up for the compost program. So far, just trying to establish contacts for raw materials. My ground is high in PO4 from chicken manure. Too high in fact to use more bird doo from a nutrient management perspective (save the bay). Found horse doo has much less PO4. Found a good sized horse farm fairly nearby that has offered me their doo for the hauling. Carbon material will be the easy thing to find. Have to contact municipalities to check out leaves. Tree guys, sawmills etc are also local. A lot to think about to try to do something good, without taking more resources than the benefit provided.

Interested in hearing comments, reflections, concerns, etc.........