----- Original Message ----- From: "Hugh Lovel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 1:01 PM Subject: Re: What is Magic?
Dear Hugh- Thanks for your thoughts. I do believe that we are learning and are doing more things right than wrong. I believe we are being led to better concepts, although sometimes it is kicking and fighting. I also think that grazing the covers from the results we have seen is more right than wrong. It may not be the best, but it is much better than our previous practices 6 years ago. > To graze or not? While it is true enough that reincorporating cover crops > adds back more organic matter than grazing, it does not do so much for > increasing digestive factors. I can't think of anything that improves these > like cows. I'm glad!!!!!! > With your broadcasters, as Mark says, you should have no trouble with cow > dung getting back into the soil. A cover on the soil is your highest > priority. If it's green, all the better, as green vegetation takes carbon > dioxide out of the air and pumps it into the soil as sugars. THAT builds > soil organic matter as micro-organisms, which are about the most important > form of organic matter in the soil. > What you might consider is mixing in some companions in your cover crops so > you have higher density and diversity of vegetation when you graze. And > compost tea, so far, is one of the best fertility input I've seen. We feel that the teas we put on this summer really functioned as a missing link. We made over 200 batches of about 500 gallons each and just moved about the whole farm putting in on from March thru October. I really enjoy making the tea and the brewers we bought and used made very good teas according to Soil Foodweb counts. Elaine really made me understand how important the fungal portion of the teas was when I heard her speak at the bd conference. So that is my next thing to learn is how to make the teas more fungal. And on top of that if there truly is a way to use the bd preps with good intent and methods to enhance the teas even further, then it could be such a powerful tool for our soils. I know I have alot to learn here, but it feels so right. > But if you put on a light starter dose of N and P as > compost tea with all the azotobacters and mycorrhyzae alive and kicking you > will unlock sequestered P as the mycorrhyzae access the Ca and Mg, and you > will fix all the nitrogen you need. > But compost tea primes the pump. > And considering that it would be a good idea to add a little homeopathic > horn clay to the compost tea, as that will REALLY get the pumping going. > > With that in mind I wonder the merits of interplanting something like > sorghum/sudan with cowpeas for summer graze cover crop, or rye, vetch and > turnip for winter. I forget now what you were planting for cover that you > graze, but my idea here is diversity will help plug the gaps in your system. > > Best, > Hugh Some of the long term graze that we have established is definitely a mix of different grasses, some alfalfa and some Alice white clover. Some is just alfalfa and orchard grass. For short term early spring graze, we are just going to plant oats in early March and graze for about a month or 6 weeks before planting the field to corn or edible beans, and behind wheat we did triticale this last summer. We are considering planting some turnips in the corn at cultivation for use if we graze the corn and then later in the fall after corn is picked and cattle are in the corn stalks. One of the benefits we have been taught is that as you say, as above so below. The concept deals with the idea that as the grass/legume grows above ground, so do the roots below ground. Then as the cow grazes off the above ground material, the roots die back to match that above ground. This produces good carbon material in the soil. The other thing we saw this summer was a great proliferization of dung beetles. They did some really good work for us. So as I said above the learning continues, and we truly hope and pray we are doing more rights than wrongs here. Thanks for your thoughts. Michelle Wendell > >
