"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..
- Thread starter Kiwi Pete
- Start date
- Location
- Cornwall
Happens a lot here with sand. Lots of dairy farms using sand in their cubicles, goes out in slurry and it’s surprising how it pulls pH up over time. I’ve taken farms off sand before now when pH’s started getting up around 8.
Principle would stand with fym in a heap as well.
How many moves per day are they on? Doesn’t look like a massive amount there
- Location
- Cei newydd
Remember doing a infiltration test for the soakaway of the house dug a test hole, had a cup of tea, nothing happend. I would have had to dig the whole field up to soak the water. Had to do some creative thinking to please the council.Yes to both of those
I don't really "trust" soil testing absolutely as far as OM or SOC goes as you're really only taking a momentary snapshot of a cycle - a bit like looking at my photo above and "assuming" that it's wet here all the time.
But, OM is a bit better than 8% here across the area, some parts higher than that by quite a margin.
Infiltration is the big one for us as without it we are screwed, and that's really what it was when we bought the place.
One particular sampling spot only took 7mm/hr but most were 9-15mm/hr, absolutely hopeless. As luck would have it, our first year we ran totally understocked and just took a silage cut (so really, a very long rest/fallow) and that helped the infiltration a lot.
Then we worked on getting our grazing speed matched to the grass growth, then worked on getting the density up, then get the stocking rate matched to what we can run, and then get them all working together.
Now we have brilliant infiltration rates, worst bit from the first time is still the worst at 165mm/hr but 95% of the land can handle better than 200mm/hr now.
I'm hoping that the covercrop + high density AMP grazing will make a big difference in years to come, I'll grab @Henarar a photo tomorrow of the bit we muddied up the other day but it's like a big spongey mush.
You could probably get around it in Sarah's car if you went between downpours.
Pro soil team in Aberystwyth are doing infiltration tests on a range of diffrent plants, red clover came out on top which suprised me a bit because white clover had almost double the worms.
Last meeting we had back in febuary they had a model of predicded weather for 2050 and 2080 with three different temprature rises. Main thing i saw was that the summers were going to be drier and hotter and winters wetter and warmer. If their coputer model is correct i think we are all going need to manage a bit different to now.
Get ready for more flood and drought threads!
Curently the land is clasified as 3b 5 being worst, if the predicded weather was true it would be 3a because it is a bit heavy and could grow more crops than it could now.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
As many as it takes to make no mess, and no they're getting stuff all each time. About 100m² so that would make 15 shifts, they may get 3 shifts at a time (say, spread over an hour) and then a few more strips in a couple of hours
Red clover has a potentially bigger top mass and going along with that more or , rather ...deeper working roots...... than even large leaved white clovers, it's just a bigger more agressive plant.
Likes to be let go a bit tho, bit more carefully management ...than especially small leaved WC.
- Location
- Cei newydd
Red clover comes top or good in most of the trials they do, good plant to have.
Only have a couple of fields with it to fatten some lambs
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
Basalt Rock Dust Increases Carbon Capture Fourfold
“I’d say the biggest take-home message is that this strategy has legs. This strategy is looking good—has good prospects, both for increasing yields and for carbon dioxide removal.” --Mike Kelland By incorporating finely crushed basalt rock dust — and all its attendant minerals — into...
www.remineralize.org
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
It's odd that the two most abundant minerals in the soil are also the two most often overlooked - aluminium and silicon - yet they hold the keys to it working properly.Basalt Rock Dust Increases Carbon Capture Fourfold
“I’d say the biggest take-home message is that this strategy has legs. This strategy is looking good—has good prospects, both for increasing yields and for carbon dioxide removal.” --Mike Kelland By incorporating finely crushed basalt rock dust — and all its attendant minerals — into...
That's why I cannot reconcile putting on TSP and products like that, when the soil needs more silicates and humus - the free Al ions work against both
clod hopper
Member
- Location
- SHREWSBURY, shropshire
That's the weather we've been having here in the upper North Island NZ for the last few years. Winter we can grow grass no problem, summer is were we have been struggling.
- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
We have 2 months in the springtime that determines how the year, as a whole, will pan out. Luckily most of my competitors have no idea how to figure that one out, and rely on in-season rainfall
clod hopper
Member
- Location
- SHREWSBURY, shropshire
We expect a dry summer now, to be fair we do get regular rain for 9 months and mild (get about 10-12 frosts a year). Not complaining ?
- Location
- Quebec, Canada
Its still a purchased input .I looked up silica as well- the most common element in the soil and earth’s crust. We just have to farm in such a way as to make the beneficial minerals more available. They are all, mostly, in the soil already.Basalt Rock Dust Increases Carbon Capture Fourfold
“I’d say the biggest take-home message is that this strategy has legs. This strategy is looking good—has good prospects, both for increasing yields and for carbon dioxide removal.” --Mike Kelland By incorporating finely crushed basalt rock dust — and all its attendant minerals — into...
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- Location
- Quebec, Canada
Whitewalker
Member
Makes me cry every time
- Location
- Quebec, Canada
awkward
Member
- Location
- kerry ireland
Spent a day at a workshop with Hugh Lovel,and he says that sulfer is essential to active silica,magnesium boron and lime within soil structure.
Dung provides some but its not quite so good now for the just arable farmers as when we used to get acid rain
