What are your soil goals?

MarkDarvin

Well-Known Member
Not your plot goals. What are your soil goals?

I got to thinking about this today. Coming from the standpoint that soils feed plants, that feed deer, that feed us. If you are a soil manager, what are you trying to achieve, and what are you doing to achieve it?
 
I think you already know I'm a soil first guy and figure if I've taken care of the soil, problems later down the line work themselves out. All nutrients, mineral, vitamins, etc are manufactured in the soil using ingredients from both the air and the soil. To manufacture said things the soil has to have microbes, fungi, plants, insects, enzymes, etc. These things have to have a suitable environment to do their job. No bare ground, little soil disturbance, adequate fecal seeding, adequate salival seeding, etc. I do goofy things like run cattle through hunting ground and plots once in a while, transplant dirt from forests that have never had herbicides, fertilizer, or insecticides on it, TnM, etc. My ultimate goal is to have good enough soil that problem weeds (they are usually early successional plants) aren't a problem and that to plant something I just need to basically throw seed around. My goal is to do my part good enough that my part is pretty small. I hate spending time fixing something that I messed up. Hopefully wildlife on my place grows sleek, healthy, and fat due to it.
 
I do goofy things like run cattle through hunting ground and plots once in a while, transplant dirt from forests that have never had herbicides, fertilizer, or insecticides on it, TnM, etc. My ultimate goal is to have good enough soil that problem weeds (they are usually early successional plants) aren't a problem and that to plant something I just need to basically throw seed around. My goal is to do my part good enough that my part is pretty small. I hate spending time fixing something that I messed up. Hopefully wildlife on my place grows sleek, healthy, and fat due to it.
Yes, yes you do. But I bet I've taken more ideas from you than any other person. You were the founding father of awnless wheat heads as a summer food in the habitat world. I'd never heard about it until you mentioned it, and I read everything for about the last ten years. Goofy you are, no doubt about it, but I've learned a lot from you.
 
My goals are pretty simple as far as a list goes, complex in how to get there.

Moisture management
When my moisture isn't in the ideal zone, I'm operating in the flood/saturated end of the spectrum. My goal is to maintain residue year round to absorb missile strikes from every raindrop. I protect my aggregates and glomalin holding my soil particles together and helping water and oxygen move down through. I have a goal of being able to carry a four wheeler over my soil as soon as the frost is out without rutting up my surface, regardless of how wet it is.

Sunlight harvesting
I view every plant as a factory powered by the sun. Each factory is producing something above ground and below ground that something else is using to keep the economy moving. Much like a rock is crushed to produce copper, copper turned into wire, wire that carries power, power that runs a tool, a tool that turns something into something else. Charcoal briquettes were a by-product of the Ford Motor Company. That's the kind of stuff I look for in plant selections. It might take several jumps before I can rationalize the function of a plant a deer don't use that will end up benefiting deer.

Nutrient mobilization
I'm focused on maintaining as much diversity in perennial and annual plantings as possible. Every single day of the growing season, I want as many plants as possible capturing sunlight and sending liquid carbon and exudates into the soil to keep the economy well fed and humming. How can I produce as much carbon and nitrogen as possible and in a balanced way every day of the growing season? How can I unlock all the rock-bound nutrients I need to grow? The only one I haven't figured out is natural production of sulfate in medium to low OM soils. I'm going for the highest natural fertility output with the lowest fertility input.

Oppressive weed prevention
I try to keep diversity sky high so I don't go back to debilitating single weed invasions. I am a frequent study of the conditions that bring about monospeciated weed attacks. I'm not anti-weeds. In low doses, I like having weeds because I know they are serving a purpose. I will have bilateral talks with my weeds to find out why they are there and adjust my strategy based on that feedback. Are the weeds telling me I've got too much free nitrogen? Too much compaction? Too much acidity? Too much water? Too much carbon?
 
I may be more basic, but its to leave my kids with more topsoil than when i started and reverse the damage my grandfather, father, and i have done. I know my current farming/food plot ways will not last into the future (convential farming plow/disc/plant/spray/repeat). I feel like just in last 10-15 years that i've been having to use more and more fertilizer every year, more chemicals for "problem" weeds and now i even have gly resistant weeds that take over entire fields. No one thinks can happen to them at least that's what i thought those resistant weeds only an issue on big farm fields not my 30 acre bean/corn field.

But working on changing my ways by means of cover crops, no tilling if i can get there from cost standpoint, and try to eradicate some of these gly resistant weeds, so i can so to speak start w/ cleaner slate in future and of course ultimate goal grow bigger deer or make my crops that i'm growing compared to my neighbors still using their conventional tilling method much more nutritious and sought after.
 
That's high praise from a guy that has learned what you have stored up in your noggen DarkMarvin.

BoneCrusher, that is a noble goal; leave it better than you got it for the kids! I had palmer amarnath (pigweed) show up in my plots. Stressed me out as it's both gly and 2,4d resistant. The only way the local bean farmers can control it is with Liberty beans. With Roundup beans the bean fields just get taken over with the stuff. I paid attention and figured out deer LOVE to browse it so that made it not so bad as long as it didn't take over. Within a year I had it drowned out with a mix of millets/sunflowers/clovers. Those herbicide resistant weeds can be a nightmare, or not too bad with a different approach.
 
That's high praise from a guy that has learned what you have stored up in your noggen DarkMarvin.

BoneCrusher, that is a noble goal; leave it better than you got it for the kids! I had palmer amarnath (pigweed) show up in my plots. Stressed me out as it's both gly and 2,4d resistant. The only way the local bean farmers can control it is with Liberty beans. With Roundup beans the bean fields just get taken over with the stuff. I paid attention and figured out deer LOVE to browse it so that made it not so bad as long as it didn't take over. Within a year I had it drowned out with a mix of millets/sunflowers/clovers. Those herbicide resistant weeds can be a nightmare, or not too bad with a different approach.
Exactly what i'm dealing w/ the palmer amarnath. all of sudden like 1 year it went from 1 plant to about 1/2 field in a month and yes i've been working w/ extension office to try and get rid of it, as i still do cash crop some of the beans, so the stuff is a problem. Trying a pre-emergent this year and liberty beans, but yes possibly crimping cover crops on soil along w/ no till may help and going to even try to recruit buddies to pull as much as possible by hand.

any other tips much appreciated.
 
Exactly what i'm dealing w/ the palmer amarnath. all of sudden like 1 year it went from 1 plant to about 1/2 field in a month and yes i've been working w/ extension office to try and get rid of it, as i still do cash crop some of the beans, so the stuff is a problem. Trying a pre-emergent this year and liberty beans, but yes possibly crimping cover crops on soil along w/ no till may help and going to even try to recruit buddies to pull as much as possible by hand.

any other tips much appreciated.
Pre and Liberty is your best bet in my opinion for a cash crop. That system works well! Fields that were covered with the stuff were cleaned up in a season. Probably have to spray 3 times the first yr? It's costly.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
My soil goal is to pull nutrients (previously thought to be lost forever) from over 14 feet deep below grade and place them in the topsoil layer, and I'm currently doing it easily.
How...? With deep rooted natives?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
How...? With deep rooted natives?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Yes, with NWSGs. Some sources say as much as 16 feet deep rather than just 14, but 14 is for sure.

There was an old post years ago by Dgallow about how much topsoil you could build with NWSGs over time. I don't remember the details, but I remember being very impressed and thinking nothing else came close.
 
Exactly what i'm dealing w/ the palmer amarnath. all of sudden like 1 year it went from 1 plant to about 1/2 field in a month and yes i've been working w/ extension office to try and get rid of it, as i still do cash crop some of the beans, so the stuff is a problem. Trying a pre-emergent this year and liberty beans, but yes possibly crimping cover crops on soil along w/ no till may help and going to even try to recruit buddies to pull as much as possible by hand.

any other tips much appreciated.
Palmer amarnath is edible, the indians ate it as a cooked vegetable.
 
My goals are pretty simple as far as a list goes, complex in how to get there.

Moisture management
When my moisture isn't in the ideal zone, I'm operating in the flood/saturated end of the spectrum. My goal is to maintain residue year round to absorb missile strikes from every raindrop. I protect my aggregates and glomalin holding my soil particles together and helping water and oxygen move down through. I have a goal of being able to carry a four wheeler over my soil as soon as the frost is out without rutting up my surface, regardless of how wet it is.

Sunlight harvesting
I view every plant as a factory powered by the sun. Each factory is producing something above ground and below ground that something else is using to keep the economy moving. Much like a rock is crushed to produce copper, copper turned into wire, wire that carries power, power that runs a tool, a tool that turns something into something else. Charcoal briquettes were a by-product of the Ford Motor Company. That's the kind of stuff I look for in plant selections. It might take several jumps before I can rationalize the function of a plant a deer don't use that will end up benefiting deer.

Nutrient mobilization
I'm focused on maintaining as much diversity in perennial and annual plantings as possible. Every single day of the growing season, I want as many plants as possible capturing sunlight and sending liquid carbon and exudates into the soil to keep the economy well fed and humming. How can I produce as much carbon and nitrogen as possible and in a balanced way every day of the growing season? How can I unlock all the rock-bound nutrients I need to grow? The only one I haven't figured out is natural production of sulfate in medium to low OM soils. I'm going for the highest natural fertility output with the lowest fertility input.

Oppressive weed prevention
I try to keep diversity sky high so I don't go back to debilitating single weed invasions. I am a frequent study of the conditions that bring about monospeciated weed attacks. I'm not anti-weeds. In low doses, I like having weeds because I know they are serving a purpose. I will have bilateral talks with my weeds to find out why they are there and adjust my strategy based on that feedback. Are the weeds telling me I've got too much free nitrogen? Too much compaction? Too much acidity? Too much water? Too much carbon?
Do you have any pictures of your forbs growing that you can post?
 
Yes, with NWSGs. Some sources say as much as 16 feet deep rather than just 14, but 14 is for sure.

There was an old post years ago by Dgallow about how much topsoil you could build with NWSGs over time. I don't remember the details, but I remember being very impressed and thinking nothing else came close.
Outstanding!
When I started some new plots 5yrs ago I made them long and narrow... broken up by strips of NWSG's. I wanted as much of the plots adjacent or touching the native grasses as possible. Wanted plot plants right next to those deep roots for water filtration, mineral mining, OM, etc. I put cattle on the plots once in a while to encourage tillering of the grasses, stomp above ground OM into the soil, and spread microbes in poo and saliva. Hard to beat nature's best work.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
Outstanding!
When I started some new plots 5yrs ago I made them long and narrow... broken up by strips of NWSG's. I wanted as much of the plots adjacent or touching the native grasses as possible. Wanted plot plants right next to those deep roots for water filtration, mineral mining, OM, etc. I put cattle on the plots once in a while to encourage tillering of the grasses, stomp above ground OM into the soil, and spread microbes in poo and saliva. Hard to beat nature's best work.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

I like all those things and would bet They will make a big difference. It’s about making the soil a living organism.
 
Not your plot goals. What are your soil goals?

I got to thinking about this today. Coming from the standpoint that soils feed plants, that feed deer, that feed us. If you are a soil manager, what are you trying to achieve, and what are you doing to achieve it?

I only have plot soil goals. I have maybe 3 acres of plots, the rest is hardwood forest.

I do plan to create more edge with permanent forest openings that will be managed for native forbes and grass, not sure if that counts.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
This is a good thread. I think all the above is involved in my motives. Prevent soil erosion by wind or water by keeping a variety of shallow and deep rooted plants , preventing any bare soils and all of which mine and help store nutrients in the soil. And more importantly those same plants helping control water management by affecting its peculation.
My plots and native fields have evolved to a mixture of chosen plants to natural growing and sown plants.
No truer test of this than our last years exceptional drought to this years record rainfall. And in both instances my souls have performed amazing in that regard despite some of them having only 12-18 inches of soil above the bedrock. It’s not been an overnight transition but one that’s been in the making for 10+ yrs.

Btw, on the comment of native grasses producing soils...it was said broomsedge produced 6 in topsoil.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Do you have any pictures of your forbs growing that you can post?
There's not much growing just yet. I'm still dealing with mid 20's for temps up there. But here's some from last year.

Never knew what willowherb was or had even seen it until last year. But it popped up in my clover and on some of my trails, and the deer had hit every single plant.
willowherb.PNG

wh.JPG

Fleabane is a favorite of the bees. The deer will eat on it some as well. It's a nice subordinate plant. Never seen it dominate anywhere, but it does carve out it's own little spot in a mix.
fleabane.jpg

Bee butt chicory. Everything out there seems to love it.
bee butt chicory.jpg

Flax is also a nice subordinate plant. It makes a spot but doesn't dominate.
Flax.jpg

There are many others, most I never put in, but they are there: Curly dock, potentilla, skull caps, swamp aster, dandelion, ragweed, cosmos, buttercup, carrot, catchfly, ox-eye daisey, and calico aster. There are some other broadleaves out there I haven't identified. I know they are common weeds, but they don't proliferate beyond a few here and there. If the deer aren't browsing them, and they're not taking over, I don't pay much attention. I assign a diversity point and move on.
 
I also found jewelweed for the first time last year. I wish my property was covered in it. Still gotta figure out how to stimulate that up outta the seed bank.
 
I also found jewelweed for the first time last year. I wish my property was covered in it. Still gotta figure out how to stimulate that up outta the seed bank.

The thing that helps JW the most is removing the other species that competes with it at the places it wants to grow. It just needs some open space more than anything.
 
Back
Top