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Super vigorous strains of soil microbes

F

Faster horses

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
30,517
Location
NE WY at the foot of the Big Horn mountains
We met these people while at the Pendleton Roundup. They raised and trained the big Longhorn steers that pulled a freight wagon in the parade*. They raise Longhorn x Black Angus cattle, sell grass fed beef and raise Quarter Horses.

www.thickerpasture.com

Highly concentrated commercial grade of super vigorous strains Microbes

This is a bit over my head, so I hope this turns into a conversation here, as I would be interested in what y'all think.

*more on that story later, with pictures I hope to post. :D
 
Our local NRCS office is really pushing to start using cover crops on dryland farm ground. Not really using this kind of product, but utilizing crops like field peas, radishes some clover's etc. to help with producing more organic matter in your soil. With using cover crops the soil will produce the microbes naturally plus add nitrogen back in your ground. But ist been a hard sell for most in my country to think about planting a cover crop and taking away the sub soil moisture from the next crop that you are going to grow.

Thanks for sharing was interesting to read.
 
I have been using a seed inoculant on all the grass/leguem seed I have been spreading the last several years. I feel that it helps in getting the plants going. I am leary of alot of the soil amendments that are promote as a cure all. My suggestion is get a small amount and run a few test areas on your operation to see if it works or not.
 
Thanks for sharing FH, always good to get the mind thinking. I use a compost tea brewed by High Brix Mfg at Leduc, AB. It's got more strains of microbes than most products I've seen in Canada, and it's liquid, so goes in the blend with the other water soluble products I use. Microbes alone are not the cure-all either, but they're a great place to start. My experience has been that it's a slow process to rebuild soil that's been chemically farmed for years. You start adding soil amendments, microbes, tea or whatever, into your usual nutrient program to boost soil health, but your normal program of chemical and NPK is toxic to alot of the microbes you're trying to add and/or promote. So you constantly do a 2 step forward, 1 step back until your soil health improves over time, and you can reduce the amount of chemical and NPK you apply.

Adding cover crops in the mix is a fantastic way to build organic matter. The argument that a cover crop uses moisture is negated by how much more moisture is retained in higher OM levels. Organic matter is like a sponge over your dirt. The thicker the sponge, the more water and nutrients it will retain.
 
I have tried to use cover crops. And while I like the Idea havn't worked to good here the times I have tried. It's been so dry they havn't really had a chance to work. We have also tried a microbial thing called accomplish to mix with fertilizer to help use some of the overabundance of phos on a field that has had manure put on it a bunch and it's supposed to help the plant take up the fertilizer better. Havn't seen much of a difference, but its hard to test anything when your biggest limiting factor is lack of moisture.
 
PureCountry said:
Thanks for sharing FH, always good to get the mind thinking. I use a compost tea brewed by High Brix Mfg at Leduc, AB. It's got more strains of microbes than most products I've seen in Canada, and it's liquid, so goes in the blend with the other water soluble products I use. Microbes alone are not the cure-all either, but they're a great place to start. My experience has been that it's a slow process to rebuild soil that's been chemically farmed for years. You start adding soil amendments, microbes, tea or whatever, into your usual nutrient program to boost soil health, but your normal program of chemical and NPK is toxic to alot of the microbes you're trying to add and/or promote. So you constantly do a 2 step forward, 1 step back until your soil health improves over time, and you can reduce the amount of chemical and NPK you apply.

Adding cover crops in the mix is a fantastic way to build organic matter. The argument that a cover crop uses moisture is negated by how much more moisture is retained in higher OM levels. Organic matter is like a sponge over your dirt. The thicker the sponge, the more water and nutrients it will retain.
Click to expand...

Interesting, PC.
We have been on our place 20 years now and we have never used fertilizer or chemical on the ground we are using for hay production, with the exception of what might be happening now. (While we are gone, the neighbor was going to work some ground for us and he may have sprayed it with Roundup, not sure--this spring we disked a lot of plants in this field back into the soil and let the field sit.This fall there was a lot of plants coming again, alfalfa, weeds, thistle :x etc so it needed to be worked again. Now I wonder if using Roundup would negate (is that a word???) the effect of disking the plant matter into the soil. This was a field we planted hay barley on last year, 2012, and it didn't make. So that was disked back into the soil last fall and we did that again with what came up this spring. We missed the boat not planting it back to something this spring, but it was so dry and and hay barley seed was not to be found, so it wasn't planted. Now we are planning to plant it to the Willow Creek Forage Winter Wheat that has been discussed here.

Is what we are doing helping our soil or is there more we can do?

Your thoughts, anyone?
 
FH if you work the plants back in when they are green is the best time, as far as depositing nutrients into your soil, but working them in now when they're going dormant is still good for it as well.

The Roundup will negate some of the benefits, but if you want to spray to control weeds before seeding, it's entirely your call. Weeds are always the gray area no one likes to talk about. Myself, I don't mind them and just take what comes, but I'm a grazer. If I was an organic seed producer I would still accept the weeds, but I would also accept the fact that I have to clean my seed thoroughly.

As you improve soil over time, believe it or not, you should see less weeds. There will always be some, but a really healthy soil with lots of organic matter and a pH around 6.5 will have less weed problems.

Bottom line FH, you're putting organic matter into your soil and that is always good. The more you put into your soil, the more you will get out of it. Unless you're putting in Roundup. :lol:

Ha, couldn't resist.
 
PureCountry said:
FH if you work the plants back in when they are green is the best time, as far as depositing nutrients into your soil, but working them in now when they're going dormant is still good for it as well.

The Roundup will negate some of the benefits, but if you want to spray to control weeds before seeding, it's entirely your call. Weeds are always the gray area no one likes to talk about. Myself, I don't mind them and just take what comes, but I'm a grazer. If I was an organic seed producer I would still accept the weeds, but I would also accept the fact that I have to clean my seed thoroughly.

As you improve soil over time, believe it or not, you should see less weeds. There will always be some, but a really healthy soil with lots of organic matter and a pH around 6.5 will have less weed problems.

Bottom line FH, you're putting organic matter into your soil and that is always good. The more you put into your soil, the more you will get out of it. Unless you're putting in Roundup. :lol:

Ha, couldn't resist.
Click to expand...

A lot of weeds grow where we are. Thistle grows in abundance. This is so interesting. Mr. FH has always maintained that we need to put 'matter' back into the soil. We haven't used Roundup except one time...on a field that we put back to grass and we haven't disturbed it since. We are more grass farmers, or try to be. I just talked with the neighbor who worked the field I am talking about and he said there was a lot of 'rhubarb' there so he disked it again. It was really green this spring when Mr. FH disked it under and was still fairly green this fall for the second disking. They couldn't find the Willow Creek Forage Winter Wheat anywhere close, so the plan is to plant plain Winter Wheat.

If it was available, the cost of the Willow Creek from Bowman, ND was $17/bu for anyone that is wondering about price.

Mr. FH has always wanted to plow the plants under by turning the soil over, but no one in our area does this. What are you thoughts on that PC (and anyone else who is interested in this topic). We would sure like to do this correctly. Appreciate the input PC, very much.
 
Discing is the number one way to dry a field out and lose moisture, so that is why especially these dry years the disc's don't get much use. When water is your number one limiting factor, you don't want to do anything to lose any of it. Also just a fyi some weed seed can live up to 70 years before sprouting, so once you have them it's an ongoing battle.
 
3 M L & C said:
Discing is the number one way to dry a field out and lose moisture, so that is why especially these dry years the disc's don't get much use. When water is your number one limiting factor, you don't want to do anything to lose any of it. Also just a fyi some weed seed can live up to 70 years before sprouting, so once you have them it's an ongoing battle.
Click to expand...

I can understand that. So what do you suggest we should do? Plow it under with a moldboard plow?
 
3ML&C, you know your region better than me, and I don't mean to come across as saying that my experiences will work anywhere. I know they won't. What I can say is we've taken absolute sand, organic matter levels being 0.5%, and an acidic pH of 4.8-5.0, and turned it into highly productive ground by putting organic matter on it and discing it in. We did it with cover crops, bale grazing on it in the winter, and more cover crops the following year. After 3 years of that we seeded it to alfalfa and meadow brome, carefully grazed it and it paid off big time.

This is in a region that averages 12-14" of rain, and 12" of snowfall. I've seen it done in drier regions than that, although it takes time. Some years in any region are so damn dry you can't make progress with any plan, program or product. But you don't quit.

As for seeds, I agree some last a long time, but none of us start out with weed-free soil. Nor do we start out with weed seed-free soil. If you think you don't have weed seeds in your soil, let your farmed ground sit idle for the first two months of spring and see what comes up. Between birds, deer and wind weed seeds move around the country pretty darn quick. No amount of chemical will ever eradicate them.
 
PureCountry said:
3ML&C, you know your region better than me, and I don't mean to come across as saying that my experiences will work anywhere. I know they won't. What I can say is we've taken absolute sand, organic matter levels being 0.5%, and an acidic pH of 4.8-5.0, and turned it into highly productive ground by putting organic matter on it and discing it in. We did it with cover crops, bale grazing on it in the winter, and more cover crops the following year. After 3 years of that we seeded it to alfalfa and meadow brome, carefully grazed it and it paid off big time.

This is in a region that averages 12-14" of rain, and 12" of snowfall. I've seen it done in drier regions than that, although it takes time. Some years in any region are so damn dry you can't make progress with any plan, program or product. But you don't quit.

As for seeds, I agree some last a long time, but none of us start out with weed-free soil. Nor do we start out with weed seed-free soil. If you think you don't have weed seeds in your soil, let your farmed ground sit idle for the first two months of spring and see what comes up. Between birds, deer and wind weed seeds move around the country pretty darn quick. No amount of chemical will ever eradicate them.
Click to expand...

I applaud what you are doing, and I don't want to come across as rude either. My bottom line is to be profitable. I have been trying some cover crop stuff on some small patches, and have seen no benefit, might be from the years we are having but I have been trying, and that seed isn't cheap either. What kind of income did you receive off this ground during the three years you were planting cover crop and discing it in? I couldn't just take three years off on any ground I have, and still be in business.

FH I don't know what I would do if I were you. We are the most productive here with the least amount of soil disturbance, and the most amount of ground cover on top of the ground from previous crops.
 
Farmers here have been planting the cover crops for around the last 5 years and it seems to be catching on. The problem is......we aren't farmers per sei.
I do realize we need healthy soil to plant and harvest hay. But we're old.....will we see a return in our lifetime by planting cover crops? :P

I really appreciate this conversation.
 
Plant your cover crops and graze them. I am with PC bale grazing does wounders but it takes a long time to cover any amount of ground.
 
3ML&C - those 3 years I should have clarified. I disked under the first cover crop, which was a mix of oats and fall rye with plenty of weeds. The rye then came back on its own, and I grazed it for fall grazing with my own pairs. Got alot of days out of it and it was high energy feed so the cows milked heavier than they would have on native grass and it showed in the calves and the BCS of the cows going into winter.

The 2nd year, the rye came back thick as hair on a dog, with weeds again. We disked that under, then hired a neighbor to seed an oat-barley mix, which we cut at the first killing frost in late September and swath grazed the cows on it into the new year. When that ran low we started putting the bales out in between where swaths had been and bale grazed until they went to stockpiled native in April.

The 3rd year I hired the neighbor again to seed oats and fall rye. We custom grazed yearlings on it which made the best profit per acre of anything we had done prior. Made about $50/acre profit and added a lot of nutrient to the soil. Moved them every day on 5-10 acre strips. The regrowth was 2 feet tall by fall, and we disked it under.

The 4th year we had the neighbor seed the alfalfa-meadow brome mix into good moisture, but when it started coming up the tap shut off and things got very dry. We decided not to graze it so that it could establish properly, and that was the first and only year we got nothing from it. The next year we had an incredible stand and it's paid off every year since.

At any rate, it worked for us. Not for anyone else, but for us. We took sand that had cactus, creeping cedar and spear grass that the deer wouldn't graze on, and turned it into this:

 
Very interesting PC. I'm always trying something new as I said have been dabbling in cover crops just haven't had them do very good yet. I'm interested in you swath grazing. Would the quality of the feed not be better if you baled it and then bale grazed it? I know it would be here. But sometimes we get a warm up during winter and get rain instead of snow.
 
At Hardisty, AB we were far enough North that we didn't have to worry about warm spells and rain deteriorating the feed quality. The costs saved by not baling and hauling are the appeal of bale grazing, however, you are still growing a crop that draws nutrients out of the soil. Bale grazing is importing nutrients onto your fields, so I always have preferred it over swath grazing.
 

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