Regenerative Plotting

Big little surprise on the surface this weekend. Where I had made deep layers of clay over my topsoil, I was worried I’d have to manually move worms to this soil once it was going to get the wigglers in business.

Then I found castings. I couldn’t believe it. There aren’t a ton yet, but some survived the ride. I checked two spots I knew were just solid paste.





I then checked another spot that caught a sod booger that stayed on top.



I’m still going to move worms out here once the clover canopies. I set up some spots near my yard with wood slabs. I’ll go back and spread some alfalfa pellets underneath to help bring them in. I’ll move a dozen at a time in solo cups and plant them every so many feet out there and wish them luck.


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I know the goal of regenerative plotting is to eliminate discing, plowing, and spraying fields. But how bad is it to spray a field once a year in the fall after broadcasting seed and mowing it?

If I have a great stand of grain I probably won’t have to spray but if I have an “ugly” plot, will I be doing damage to the soil? Or am I just better off throwing new seed and mowing every fall and taking what I get in new growth from crimson clover and other desired plants along with what Mother Nature provides me?

jlane35 said:

I know the goal of regenerative plotting is to eliminate discing, plowing, and spraying fields. But how bad is it to spray a field once a year in the fall after broadcasting seed and mowing it?

If I have a great stand of grain I probably won’t have to spray but if I have an “ugly” plot, will I be doing damage to the soil? Or am I just better off throwing new seed and mowing every fall and taking what I get in new growth from crimson clover and other desired plants along with what Mother Nature provides me?

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It's likely not a huge problem. If you think about the 5 principles of Reg Ag, the one you're going against is "keep living roots in the soil". When you spray you're killing the "living roots", but it's at the time of planting, so the impact should be brief. Mowing or crimping's goals are killing the existing plants too. Glyphosate isn't soil active, and has no residual effect. If you were spraying with something else, that could be a more of a problem.

How are you guys who never spray handling grasses like fescue and others that gradually come back in your plots?

Native Hunter said:

How are you guys who never spray handling grasses like fescue and others that gradually come back in your plots?

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I have a patch of some grass that I can’t get anything to grow through. Last year I didn’t spray, I did a throw and mow into crimson clover and winter rye. The growth was decent. This is what it looks like now.
But in the center of the field there is thick patch of grass. And I’m afraid if I don’t spray this year it will take over more of the plot.

Native Hunter said:

How are you guys who never spray handling grasses like fescue and others that gradually come back in your plots?

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I wonder the same thing Native, but our problem is johnson grass.

jlane35 said:

I know the goal of regenerative plotting is to eliminate discing, plowing, and spraying fields. But how bad is it to spray a field once a year in the fall after broadcasting seed and mowing it?

If I have a great stand of grain I probably won’t have to spray but if I have an “ugly” plot, will I be doing damage to the soil? Or am I just better off throwing new seed and mowing every fall and taking what I get in new growth from crimson clover and other desired plants along with what Mother Nature provides me?

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You risk losing your mycorhizal fungi (MF). They don't tolerate a totally dead landscape for long (like 14 days and you're at zero survivors). Still, I understand what you guys are dealing with, with that johnson grass. That MF is the keystone to be able to get rid of fertilizer, among a few other things (diversity and C:N ratios).

If a full rate of winter rye planted in the fall can't hold back the johnson grass, I'm not sure there's a way without doing some ugly work to clean the slate. Could you get a handle on that JG if you killed it late in the season and covered it with winter rye just before winter dormancy?

I’ve got sedge grass and horsetail coming on strong in my perennial clover. I’m gonna let it all run wild this summer and scalp it good about 8 weeks before frost. I’ll throw and mow a stiff rate of rye into it, with some spring forage barley and flax and see what happens. It’s got wheat now, and I’m not seeing the wheat coming fast enough to snuff out that sedge. But these plots always look rough as the summer rolls on. Once they get mowed after the summer solstice, they seem to pull thru it and fill up with food.



I’m cutting open a new plot that is solid quackgrass, and that is our awfully hard rhizomous grass to kill on dry land. I’m thinking I’m gonna have it worked up by a neighbor a couple times over a week to see if I can set it back enough to punch in a stiff rate of rye, yellow sweet clover, flax, sunflower, and chicory. It is really uneven and rutty there and needs to be terraformed flat so I don’t destroy my equipment maintaining it.

It’s really not meant to be a food plot, more of a controlled perennial cover/bee/fawning plot that I can convert to garden space later if I want. Otherwise hoping to mow it once a year and keep the rye/sweet clover loop going until that quack is snuffed out.




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This is my yard plot. It’s a tiny one that I run all kinds of experiments in. I can keep an eye on it without going in the woods. It had cocklebur or burdock (not sure which it is) in it last year, and it looks like I have just as much or more this year.



Still going to let it run it’s course and see what happens. If it looks like it’s getting worse, I’ll throw and mow this back to a strong rate of rye for the next cycle. Also has winter wheat, but if that can’t starve this stuff out, I’ll have to stick with rye until I can. I do not have this weed in un-touched areas, so I'm fairly confident it'll fix what it needs to fix and go dormant again.



These last two plots are the oldest in their perennial lifecycle I’ve got. I’m dead set on seeing this through without breaking the living plant cycle. I want to see what happens to these spots in year 4, 5, 6… So far, a mowing as the summer heat starts to wind down really cleans them up, and the good stuff finds a way.


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Has anybody followed buckwheat with clover? I put our fall cereal/clover mix in last fall and there is no clover coming in at all. The problem is either too much rye in that mix or the buckwheat. I’ve had rye dominate in the past when seeded too heavy, but I’ve never had it completely snuff out the clover, even on the edges. There isn’t even one single clover leaf anywhere to be found where we had buckwheat last summer.

KSQ2 said:

Has anybody followed buckwheat with clover? I put our fall cereal/clover mix in last fall and there is no clover coming in at all. The problem is either too much rye in that mix or the buckwheat. I’ve had rye dominate in the past when seeded too heavy, but I’ve never had it completely snuff out the clover, even on the edges. There isn’t even one single clover leaf anywhere to be found where we had buckwheat last summer.

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What kind of clover was it?

MarkDarvin said:

What kind of clover was it?

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Alice, ladino, and medium red

KSQ2 said:

Alice, ladino, and medium red

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Did u spray anything before u planted last fall?


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I sprayed clethodim the first of July and did the t&m the middle of September.

Edit to say I actually sprayed the clethodim the end of July, not the beginning. I took a look back on our property journal to make sure.

That is odd. Is it a new plot in an old pasture?


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MarkDarvin said:

That is odd. Is it a new plot in an old pasture?


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No, it's part of our lower barn plot that was taken from ag ground 7 years ago.

It’s either extremely bad seed or you got some long residue herbicide in the soil. What busts the herb idea though is the fact u got buckwheat to grow.

Even if it germinated and died, there should be some hard seed that didn’t germ with the rest of the group.


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After doing a little research, I think I’m going to broadcast some clover with the buckwheat this summer, while knocking back the rate on the buckwheat just a little bit. Maybe that will give the clover a better head start on the rye in the cereal mix this fall. I’ll reseed clover again this fall just like normal. Hopefully this will fix the problem of no clover I’m experiencing now.
This is part of the motivation:
https://plantcovercrops.com/buckwheat-nurse-crop-for-clover/

I realize broadcasting in the middle of summer won’t be nearly the prime conditions as early fall, but clover seed is cheap. I’ll probably double the rate of the buckwheat over what the author used, since I won’t be planting as much variety. I’ll use the leftover buckwheat to throw into established clover and let it do its thing there.

Ok, after some research, it has become clear that buckwheat doesn’t deter clover germination and growth, the only conclusion I can come up with is the rye got a LOT better germination rate in the buckwheat stubble than anything else I’ve ever thrown in.
So, now I have a very thick stand of maturing winter rye without anything else growing in it, good or bad. I’m thinking I will throw and mow buckwheat into it in a month and try again this fall with less rye in the cereal/clover mix. How does that sound to you regenerative experts?

After reading both of my last posts, I thought I’d add that I’ve been planning to follow last fall’s brassica plot with buckwheat all along, I’ll use the extra to throw into the rye, instead of throwing it into established clover. I’d should have enough to throw in both the rye and the brassicas.

This is my best regenerative summer plot. It's a patch of jewelweed (highly desirable deer forage) that is 80 yards long and 30 yards wide. All I do is mow it once a year (before germination) and walk through later and remove any thistles by hand that might come up. In a few weeks this will be covered with orange flowers and set seed for next year. The deer are already hammering it, but I also have it in other places, so there is so much that they can't eat it to the ground. All I did to get it to come out of the seedbank was to kill the fescue.

Why does this work so well? Because:
* The conditions for jewelweed (amount of sunlight, soil, etc.) are perfect for it.
* It is a hardy "ecotype" annual growing where it has grown for centuries.
What can be learned from this? I don't know, but I like the way it works.