York, How was your soils day?

[BSH]

York, would have liked to come to your day last week but wasn't able to. Hopefully another year it will be possible. How did it go?

 

[York]

York, would have liked to come to your day last week but wasn't able to. Hopefully another year it will be possible. How did it go?

BSH,
thanks for asking.
We had on our soil Fertility day of our national soil conservation group 260 people attending. Quite a number where far travelling.
Message was clear & well received. Had Cover crop mixes in strips & also some mustard. At the morning we dug out some roots and while we had the indoor speech it rained. the mustard roots where washed out and the cover crop mix the soil was still attached to the roots. So the obvious was shown: mustard doesn't form active soil particles with exudate's.
When we wanted to get out the rain stopped, just in time.

For me it has become clear that we need to get livestock back on the farms, at least where we have low rainfall. the best side effect is: cover crops are making money and not costing only money.
Next soil fertility day will be held in spring 2015, so every 1 1/2 years.
York-Th.

 

[BSH]

SOunds as if it was very well attended. Interesting that you were able to observe the differences with the cover crop and mustard. I am interested to see how my late sown cover crops turns out from DSV. I hope I have enough barley volunteers and weeds in my forage crops to mitigate the all the brassica crop effect if that effect is so marked.