Lloyd Charles wrote:
This is a bit of a trick question I think! I really should see the site before commenting but lets excercise our imagination for a bit. I am assuming the numbers you are using are from James? If so they would be the result of a pendulum analysis? I dont have a problem there, I've seen him use it close up, but depending on how he framed his questions and his base knowledge of soil testing/analysis could put a different meaning on ratios etc to what I am used to from hard chemistry tests.
We are not just running on James' work, knowledge or experience here.
The background to this site is that it is pasture which has not been regularly farmed in any sense of the term since white settlement. It had transitory grazing use when the droving of stock for one reason or another was a common thing, and when the herds and flocks were assembled each spring for their movement up to the High Country. In those days, the first mountain snowstorm occurred around mid-April (still does in some years) heralding the beginning of winter proper six weeks hence.
The lovegrass could be something as simple as seed washed in
from offsite in previous seasons. It likes to grow in acid soil conditions
maybe it also can promote acidic soil solution by its root exudates?
There really could be a hundred explanations for this -
I get the feeling that something is going on underground in this area but it really is a puzzle. However like most puzzles there is probably a simple answer!
It could be argued that 'nature' deliberately provided this storm to give the drovers sufficient time to gather the herds together and make their journey back to the lowland pasture we are discussing where the animals were drafted into their separate mobs and returned to the home farms.
So it was that the properties around this pasture, and the pasture itself, received an annual rest from grazing; a fallow period during which natural manure broke down and was absorbed into the soil. Additionally, and particularly during the period mid-19th to early-20th centuries, pastures and smallholdings were fed with natural composts.
With the onset and spread of animal disease such as ovine johnes disease and a change to wheeled instead of 'hoof' transport, the above system fell into disuse. Use of the pasture appeared to become the prerogative of 'grass bandits' who kept flocks there way beyond the point of over-grazing while at the same time, ably abetted by officialdom, 'nuking' the area with every 'environmental' chemical and poison known to humankind.
Lloyd, you said above:
It likes to grow in acid soil conditions maybe it also can promote acidic soil solution by its root exudates?
and
I get the feeling that something is going on underground in this areaWhat would your reaction be if I turned these around? If I suggested something was bringing or had brought a high level of aluminium into and along this strip, and that the soil was generating the lovegrass with two aims - to absorb and/or dissipate the aluminium, and to restore its own health by unlocking the calcium?
roger
