10 years of soil sampling maps

[Clive]

carbon is good - should this be a surprise to a bunch of people who make a living creating it to sell ?

grow it (cover crops) spread it (compost and fym) don't burn it (tillage) or export it (straw) and maximise your collection of the 2 things required to make it (water and sunlight) and regardless of any lab results you will be on the right track !

 

[SilliamWhale]

I'm told where poultry litter was spread years ago the crops were better than today's crops so I'd say manure and grass is probably better.

Traditional farming !! - a bit of everything is where we all need to go back to.

I'd say grass is better than muck for building soil OM and soil structure. I want to put more grass in but I'm struggling to make it work in my system but will have to figure it out somehow.

 

[Bossfarmer]

That said, we used to rent a field on the cheap from a relative for silage, after 5 years of renting it he said we were running his soil indices down and told us to graze it the following year, strange because the fert we apply for silage is multicut sulphur!!

 

[Brisel]

MultiCut® Sulphur 23-4-13 (7SO3)?

 

[N.Yorks.]

Thought this may be of interest to some people. We started precision sampling in 2006 and went down the road of variable rate P, K and Lime as well as Nitrogen. In 2008 we dumped the variable rate stuff. Since then we have used flat rate muck spreading of mainly compost but also some sewage cake. The results are interesting. This field is 23ha in cropable size and had 34 tonnes of lime in 2006 due to the test results. Its not had any more lime since then. Its not had any P & K out of a bag since 2007 and has solely had compost and cake applied. It did get 5t/ha of Gypsum in 2008 as a means of applying enough sulphur so we could use straight Urea as the Nitrogen. It was also applied due to the magnesium levels but we saw no change from that.

File 1 from 2006 (file ending 327)
File 2 from 2011 (file ending 506)
File 3 from 2016 (file ending 222)

From 2006 to 2011 it was in the typical ww/osr rotation. Since then cropping has changed to spring crops due to BG creeping in slowly. Its grow 2 x spring wheat, 1 x spring barley, 1 x spring linseed and will go to spring barley again in 2017.

Its not been ploughed since about 2006 and was mainly in a min till system with some no till crops more recently. Its had a couple of cover crops but these were not successful in obtaining soil cover.

There is a pond in the middle of the field. Above it is a clay loam soil and below it is a virtually jet black wet clay. Today the soil looks and walks very differently to what it did 10 years ago. We've gone from having virtually no tilth on the black clay to nearly 2 inches of friable soil all year round on the surface.

I'm surprised you say that you haven't noticed an increase in yields over the 10 year period?
Have you noticed healthier plants at all which have allowed you to reduce input costs?
You'll have saved a fair bit on mineral P and K I guess?
Are you applying less bagged N now as the compost and other manures contribute to the soil mineral N?

Sorry to fire a load of questions, it's an interesting post. Thanks.

 

[warksfarmer]

I'm surprised you say that you haven't noticed an increase in yields over the 10 year period?
Have you noticed healthier plants at all which have allowed you to reduce input costs?
You'll have saved a fair bit on mineral P and K I guess?
Are you applying less bagged N now as the compost and other manures contribute to the soil mineral N?

Sorry to fire a load of questions, it's an interesting post. Thanks.

Overall yields have remained stagnant and no different to 10 yrs ago when indexs were 1-2.

No reduction in Nitrogen really so around 200-220 base then a protein spray. Compost doesn't give much if any nitrogen. Soil N levels are the same and fluctuate from 20-80kg/ha at Autumn test time.

Obviously no bagged P & K has been bought for a very long time so that's a saving less the application cost of the compost.

As for chemicals we stopped using expensive fungicides just because trials here showed no yield increase. Weed spend isn't any different.

 

[N.Yorks.]

Overall yields have remained stagnant and no different to 10 yrs ago when indexs were 1-2.

No reduction in Nitrogen really so around 200-220 base then a protein spray. Compost doesn't give much if any nitrogen. Soil N levels are the same and fluctuate from 20-80kg/ha at Autumn test time.

Obviously no bagged P & K has been bought for a very long time so that's a saving less the application cost of the compost.

As for chemicals we stopped using expensive fungicides just because trials here showed no yield increase. Weed spend isn't any different.

Yes, the amount of N readily available to the crop established after the compost application is basically zero, but if you are significantly building OM in the soil this will be mineralising and releasing soil mineral N.

Why are you doing Autumn soil mineral testing, you've got a whole winter of leaching which will reduce what the crop will eventually get an opportunity to take up in the spring? Also, if you've applied compost with a C:N ration of 20:1 the soil microbes will assimilate some of the N from the soil solution to allow the microbial population to increase and to start breaking down the greater carbon concentration. Autumn SMN analysis would likely look lower than it would in the spring because of this.

There are various pros and cons between SMN analysis autumn v winter, but it seems that you may be better doing this in the late winter/early spring. If you had a crop with a nitrogen requirement in the autumn like OSR then maybe autumn sampling would be more applicable.

 

[N.Yorks.]

Just another question, what nutrient are you variable spreading the compost against, P or K? Or both?

 

[warksfarmer]

Yes, the amount of N readily available to the crop established after the compost application is basically zero, but if you are significantly building OM in the soil this will be mineralising and releasing soil mineral N.

Why are you doing Autumn soil mineral testing, you've got a whole winter of leaching which will reduce what the crop will eventually get an opportunity to take up in the spring? Also, if you've applied compost with a C:N ration of 20:1 the soil microbes will assimilate some of the N from the soil solution to allow the microbial population to increase and to start breaking down the greater carbon concentration. Autumn SMN analysis would likely look lower than it would in the spring because of this.

There are various pros and cons between SMN analysis autumn v winter, but it seems that you may be better doing this in the late winter/early spring. If you had a crop with a nitrogen requirement in the autumn like OSR then maybe autumn sampling would be more applicable.

Prefer plant tissue n testing and those results push the total application to 200-220.

The autumn n test was just this year on a full environmental analysis that's all. We haven't done soil n tests in the spring for a while.

 

[N.Yorks.]

Whats the environmental test, is that analysis you use for the deployment benefit statement?