"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

CornishTone said:

This (roller)...
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Vs this...
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Sheer weight, action of movement, distribution, also depends on the surface I should imagine? If cattle are walking on a thick mat of thatch and OM, they probably wouldn’t disturb much of the soil beneath. It would act like a shock absorber. Conversely, people spread sh1t in the rain with big gear, on grass that’s been freshly cut or grazed down to the deck and, well, you know what’ll happen.

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Kiwi Pete said:

Compaction at depth, is my main reason for avoiding it.
Even cattle comparable in weight to a "pickup" , although it may have less psi in terms of ground pressure on the surface, it still operates like a roller: because it is continually in contact with the soil it can create a similar effect to a bow-wave from a ship, which disrupts the bonds that hold the soil aggregates together and apart (unsure if you read the several pages where @Clive had to defend his analogy about bridges?)

By contrast, the weight of your big friendly quadruped, is lifted up and down - and that's why a roller is just like a tyre, it is a perfect design for squeezing the air out and pushing aggregates together.

If you poke your finger into a birthday cake, the compaction is actually very minor to if you put the same pressure on your cake with a rolling pin and move it, which is why the roading teams use vibrating rollers and moisture to good effect

Or that's how I see it

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hendrebc said:

Interesting that they say shallow incorporating the crop residue is beneficial when all you hear everywhere else is that anything that disturbs the soil is a had thing. But I suppose if the residue is on top oxidising then it does no good to the soil either? Frank Newman Turner who wrote fertility farming was a big fan of incorporating crop residue and any green covers before a crop but I thought it was more because he didn't have any other way of doing it back in the 1940s and 50s before there was glyphosate to be able to get a start for any seedlings. He maee incredible improvements to his soil so maybe tillage of some sort does have a place after all?

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CornishTone said:

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say!

Cattle/sheep are only effecting a tiny area and causing shallow compaction which, if healthy enough, the soil will readily absorb and recover from.

Also, using that prickle roller as an example, it clunks along pushing little points in like a hoof, but, unlike a flat roller, doesn’t flatten the surface sealing over all the holes and pores and excluding air and water if used unwisely. Is that fair?

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Treg said:

I think Newman Turner would plough grass leys but disc crops residues !?
A grass ley over 5- 10 years let's the soil recover , whereas cropping every year doesn't give the soil enough recovery time, so then makes sense to shallow till.

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hendrebc said:

Now you mentioned it o think he did plough old grass leys. His kind of ploughing would be different to what people now call ploughing though. Most of everyone ploughs at 9 inches now it seems to he the default depth but I don't know why I'd say it's much too deep for most things. When I use mine it's set as high as I can get away with. 5 or 6 inches at the most was more than enough almost all the time. Older ploughs especially horse drawn ones would barley go that deep. I think horse drawn ploughs went down 4, inches at the most? That's barely more than the turf on the top. No wonder it's taken heavy machinery and cheap diesel to knackers most soils. Occasionally ploughing at those depths under a proper rotation couldn't be doing much damage. When it got easy to do it every year that's when the trouble has been caused. It never gets a chance to recover

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Macsky said:

I think Newman turner maybe used the plough once on breaking in an ancient pasture, and maybe even subsoiled, but then that was it, with the land under good management and in a good rotation it shouldn’t be needed again.

I can’t see ploughing at 4” doing any harm in an old pasture, but what modern plough would manage that? Maybe a heavy disc would be better, as you’re not burying your fertile layer, just cutting it up and mixing it.

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hendrebc said:

Now you mentioned it o think he did plough old grass leys. His kind of ploughing would be different to what people now call ploughing though. Most of everyone ploughs at 9 inches now it seems to he the default depth but I don't know why I'd say it's much too deep for most things. When I use mine it's set as high as I can get away with. 5 or 6 inches at the most was more than enough almost all the time. Older ploughs especially horse drawn ones would barley go that deep. I think horse drawn ploughs went down 4, inches at the most? That's barely more than the turf on the top. No wonder it's taken heavy machinery and cheap diesel to knackers most soils. Occasionally ploughing at those depths under a proper rotation couldn't be doing much damage. When it got easy to do it every year that's when the trouble has been caused. It never gets a chance to recover

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Henarar said:

goodness you wouldn't want to plough 9 inches here

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Kiwi Pete said:

Shallow ploughing almost seems to be a lost art
The three things my uncle taught me about the job were:
Don't drive on the ploughed stuff
Don't drive in th' furra
Don't go any deeper than ya need ta

But then, the plough got parked up for about 32 years while the land got its heart back, it wasn't done of habit or as part of some rotation, just simple pastoral farming.

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