No his soil did, it’s that alive ?
"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
A little hare that's been hopping along in front of the mob, fell victim to one of the New Zealand Falcons that live here. We've 3 resident breeding pairs, and their young
I kinked the fence around it, A. I don't want the bulls excavating it and B. I want "my" birds to thrive too
Wow your doing something right if you have 3 breeding pairs there aren't many of them to begin with if the people on Google have counted them properly.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
They really seem to appreciate a bit of mob density, I guess the mob "migration" is rather more than meets the eye.
Even monitoring earthworms, it's quite obvious that a migration takes place underground as well, which is why I try not to "paddock jump" if possible
There's a lot going on that we don't understand. The more I look the less I think I know.
- Location
- Isle of Skye
Is anybody doing any kind of agri-forestry? As in planting trees on open fields in an open grid like pattern, that allows fences to be setup between rows? seems since a major goal is trying to get deeper rooting plants for all the obvious benefits, A tree is the ultimate deep rooter, provides shelter in winter, shade in summer and mulches the ground with leaves annually. Just an observation that soil health under trees is very resilient to bad grazing management ,i'm contemplating trialling something along these lines and trying to think what all the pros and cons are.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Yes. We're going to plant contour "rows" wherever our lanes cross the contour lines.
The other main benefit you haven't mentioned is that it will be a bästard to plough/mow/rape for shortterm profit in future, with enough trees in the way.
I'll probably put in contour rips ala Keyline ploughing once I get the fences out of the road, and then plant in the rips where the fences intersect those.
Some great inspiration on Regrarians.org
We'll use a variety of species, from poplar acacia and willow through to bird/bee attractors like tagasaste kowhai and kakabeak.
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- Location
- Isle of Skye
Ha i like your thinking, maybe important to plant trees that have no timber value whatsoever to further remove profits.
I'll go see Regrarians.org
thanks
- Location
- Quebec, Canada
I have planted many (a couple of thousand ) trees of which less than half have survived.Over the years my methods have improved , and if I had to start over I would plant fewer at a time but do it more carefully, especially protecting the trunk from rodents. I have planted bird corridors from the river to the woods , along fencelines and in paddocks. My favourites are the fruit trees I planted along the driveway which I walk along each day to get the post and move the animals. So far only the apples are old enough to offer a snack , but the plums and pears should yield something in the next couple of years. I am doing more planting this year as I find that the animals are already using the shade from trees planted a few years ago even though they are still quite small. I have not noticed any soil benefits, but I feel this is the right thing to do, especially as my neighbours continue to cut trees and rip out roots in order to have a few more square yards in which to plant ever more corn and beans.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
There's little profit in removing trees from the landscape - IMHO.
Unless planting for harvesting purposes, of course!
Today we've been mostly planting tree lucerne seeds, ready for spring transplanting, these will go in the more sheltered warm slopes for browsing, shade, and to get the bees ranging out from the hives.
Kowhai tomorrow, they're a lot more frost-tolerant so we'll be sowing them outdoors into compost, in a sheltered corner of the garden, both are legumes and both provide a lot of fine leaf-litter
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Some crackers in there.
ShooTa
Member
- Location
- Denbighshire - In the vale of Clwyd!
love the planting in - supermarket/bread trays.. great reuse.
its all gone a bit barmy - so im very thankful for still having our mini support network of awsomeness.
so to start..
forgive me for i have sinned - i havnt done my growing season plan yet (mostly planned in my head now)
forgive me for i have sinned - i havnt got my whole farm grass amount done recently
BUT that little drought reserve of a few extra lambs held over christmas may yet do some extra provision.
its all gone a bit barmy - so im very thankful for still having our mini support network of awsomeness.
so to start..
forgive me for i have sinned - i havnt done my growing season plan yet (mostly planned in my head now)
forgive me for i have sinned - i havnt got my whole farm grass amount done recently
BUT that little drought reserve of a few extra lambs held over christmas may yet do some extra provision.
- Location
- Isle of Skye
Do you allow stock in amongst your trees occasionally? or are they just permanently kept out?
Every year i try to plant trees but most years i seem to just run out of time, its not the tree planting, its the time taken to protect them from sheep, and also deer. There was a few years when i was a bit younger i planted quite alot, and i'm benefitting from these now but there'll be no new ones to benefit from in ten years time if i dont put it higher up on he priority list...
As for soil benefits, i think what i'm seeing is that for all the years i was grazing everything down to the ground the trees at least were dropping leaves and feeding the soil. In a well managed pasture with healthy soils everywhere maybe there would be little difference between the overall soil health under trees and out in the open-and out of the tree root zone. The shelter provided definitely brings about a micro-climate effect here-with grass under trees coming through many weeks earlier in spring, however the shade in summer definitely lowers the yield.
I'm thinking shelter belts are maybe more beneficial than trying to get lone trees to grow dotted all over the place.
I guess its all about balance, like most things.
- Location
- Isle of Skye
Never heard of Kowhai tree before so looked it up, very nice.
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
I'll be watching your tree Lucerne in particular with interest.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
It's a really handy propagation method, I buy bagged potting mix a year ahead of time and leach it by putting a hole in each end and then put the garden hose in the top. It's superior to cheap seed-raising mix.
Two 20kg bags fit snugly in a breadcrate and it limits root disturbance when shifting them, 6-8 doz seedlings have ample room for rooting. If you time it right, the rows just flake off the side.
I've got a couple of huge plastic bags (balewrap recycling bags) to use as a cloche over the trays to keep warmth in, and cats out
I actually picked the idea up from an old mate who grew lots of cannabis cuttings via this method, and needed the transport-ability to avoid two-legged predators
Tree lucerne seeds are pretty easy to germinate, but many seedlings fail at a few inches high, you freeze the seed and then soak overnight in warm water, they swell up to around 3x their original size if they're good seeds.
Kowhai, same process but you either need to sand the seeds or nick them with toenail clippers as they have a very hard coat (they're adapted to river travel).
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
Birds LOVE them, but they're toxic to honeybees in large amounts, so they will be more a "down the back of the ranch" tree, it's lower and colder down there.
Amazing plants, these will be planted closer to home for winter-time bee and bird attraction purposes.I'll be watching your tree Lucerne in particular with interest.
Gotta help the pollinators! They help us enough.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
So much for taking "a photo each week to show progress"
A fair bit of the area doesn't look a patch on this, a combination of poor fertility, lack of groundcover, slugs and ducks etc.
On the plus side, there is plenty of diversity. We (boys, Sarah and I) went for a wander yesterday and played a game of "find something new".
We discovered there's about 60 species present in the area, from "weeds" to "covercrop", so that's massive
A fair bit of the area doesn't look a patch on this, a combination of poor fertility, lack of groundcover, slugs and ducks etc.
On the plus side, there is plenty of diversity. We (boys, Sarah and I) went for a wander yesterday and played a game of "find something new".
We discovered there's about 60 species present in the area, from "weeds" to "covercrop", so that's massive