Tools of the Trade: What Equipment is Needed for Your Cropping Program to Become More Sustainable?
You can, in most situations, begin down the road to less tillage and green covers with the tools you have and a cutting torch. There are three main equipment categories to conventional tillage: deep tillage, vertical tillage and finishing tillage. Sustainability requires less tillage and fewer tools. In the transition period, it is best we modify the use of our current tools before we look for new tools to add.
March is When Alfalfa Lives or Dies
“March is the month that alfalfa lives or dies”. Looks like 2023 is taking that challenge seriously. There are a few things that can hurt alfalfa that get determined in March. Why March? Because in March we vacillate between warm thawing conditions and sudden cold, freezing periods. Let’s look at what is helping or hurting alfalfa:
Rye Cover Crop Planted this Fall? Here’s Some Options for the Spring
Fall planted rye is a great starter cover crop. Despite what you were planning when you planted it, come spring you will have plenty of choices of how you want to manage it if weather throws you a curve. Let’s look at a few of those choices and figure them out:
Looking at Carbon and Nitrogen in Action
The role of carbon and nitrogen is critical to providing soil microbes with the basic building blocks of life. Both carbon and nitrogen sources are endless. Access to these sources, however is not endless in most farm fields today.
Understanding The Components of a Healthy Soil From a Nutritionist’s Perspective
Let’s look at the very basic elements of dairy nutrition and compare those to the fundamental building blocks of soil. In a simplistic sense, cow performance is based on balancing the sources of protein and energy in the cow’s diet to support and feed the microbes in the rumen. Microbes produce the key ingredients for making milk, and meat. Soils are considered ‘healthy’ when they can grow, feed and protect crops, robust crops, with very little support, if any, from commercial fertilizers and crop protection chemicals. Carbon and nitrogen, the most basic elements in the soil, are required to feed and grow microbes in the soil.