Soil

The concept of “soil health” has received a lot of emphasis lately. The phrase shows up in magazines, it’s discussed at farmer meetings and in scholarly articles, research projects are designed to study it and federal programs attempt to promote it. Soil health is a crucial topic and it’s well worth all the attention. But […]

We talked with fellow soil enthusiasts Ray Archuleta and Jeff Rasawehr, and here’s what they have to say.

The puny pea can pack a powerful punch when it comes to nitrogen fixing in your pastures. Jeff Rasawehr of Center Seeds talks about peas and planting procedures for pasture productivity and profit.

Cover crop profits range from $200-400/acre, depending on the crop Jeff Rasawehr plants. When he grazes those cover crops, he makes even bigger profits, and some scientists in Georgia back that up. Jeff has some suggestions for them, too!

Jeff Rasawehr (pronounced “Raise -a- veer”) farms 1500 acres in West Central Ohio, raising corn, soybeans, wheat, hay, and some beef.  His goal is to produce beef in an ecologically sustainable way, and, of course, to be financially viable.  His path towards that goal involves cover crops that improve his soil and become forage for his cattle. […]

Soil balancing, or BCSR, and William Albrecht have a big following, and you’d think that that many people couldn’t be wrong. But it turns out, this theory just doesn’t hold up and is costing folks time and money they could better use elsewhere.

We all know soil is important, but understanding it can take a lifetime. Here’s five minutes of video that will get you a good ways down the road.

So you got that soils report and you’re trying to figure out what you need to do to make your soils work better for your forages. Lime helps release calcium for use by plants, but there are times when you shouldn’t use it.

While substitutes can be found for many finite natural resources mined from the Earth—copper in phone lines can be replaced by fiber optics, steel in car bodies by composite plastics, and petroleum in transportation fuels by biodiesel or hydrogen cells—this is not the case for phosphorus in food production. The U.S. Geological Survey lists the following under the heading Substitutes for Phosphate Rock: “THERE ARE NO SUBSTITUTES FOR PHOSPHORUS . . . ”

Nitrogen is the most expensive, and most difficult to manage part of the fertilizer equation; too much and you waste money, too little and you don’t get the crop production you need. Here Dan Hudson shares the results of his year-long trial using two different modeling tools so you can choose the one that will work best for you.

Though you may not have the same grass species described in this article, you’re sure to get some information about how grazing affects plant rooting depth, shading, and nutrient distribution and some good ideas about how to manage your grazing to get the results you’d like.

Most of us are unaware that a fungus isolated from a Missouri soil sample became an antibiotic that has saved thousands of lives, and that it was discovered by a 76 year old botanist who had come back from retirement to do something significant. It’s a story we should know because it gives us another reason to take good care of our soil.

We all complain about too many commercials. Commercials about soil quality, though…who knew? Learn about afflictions related to tillage and how you can solve them in this video.  

We all appreciate legumes and their marvelous ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and release it into the soil. But what happens after the legume plant releases this ammonium and nitrate? I blithely figured that into the soil they went and the grass roots just picked them up. Hardly so! What I considered the “roots” of […]

Cation exchange capacity is part of your soil test results. Why do you care? Because it is the capacity of your soil to hold nutrients. Hold onto the tractor seat! We’re in for a quick and bumpy ride down the Soil Science Lane!