Interesting topic this week……I might have to give this new “regenerative” stuff a try……

Not really new stuff. Rodale institute has been using that system for years and years. It’s part of their organic strategy plantings. Pretty sure they developed the roll crimper for the front of tractors.

https://rodaleinstitute.org/science...rter-fertilizer-in-no-till-organic-corn/

They did a pretty good job of explaining things but they kinda put the whole idea inside of a box though that the concept isnt constrained by……Meaning that you don’t have to have a crimper……you don’t have to have a drill…..you don’t have to plant summer plots with 15 way store bought mixes……and so on and so forth…..Heck, you can even still keep your disk and break it out from time to time if needed…..

If you understand the concepts then you can make your own method and adapt to situations accordingly

The reason I mention that was because one part of the conversation they got hung up on this whole idea of…”Well how is regenerative ag going to effect turkey poults if I have to come in with a crimper in May and have thick thatch on the ground yada yada yada?”…….I’m thinking to myself…….”You don’t have to do any of that…”

If you want to make things perfect for turkeys then adapt your method to make it what you want it…….I’m thinking it involves maturing cereal grains and clovers without any disturbance at all in May and June.

True that. There are options depending. Back I the 90s the club had a small tractor and worn out disk. I grew cover crops summer and winter to build soil. Eventually was able to plant and grow alfalfa and the deer loved it. Took several years but lime and lots organic mass to get it there. Plant was pretty decent soil to begin with.

Food plots are basically cover crops used in organic systems to keep things growing and soil in use and not exposed

I used green manure (white clover) to grow some organic corn. About 20-25 bushels to the acre of Florianna corn.

Glad they’re bringing back to light and their hatred for ryegrass and the confusion of needs to stay in the spotlight. I hate that stuff.

I finished up watching the last 10-15 minutes of the show last night and Dr. Lashley did eventually start asking questions like….”Couldn’t you just let the native vegetation be your summer rotation?”…….Dr. Strickland answered it with a rather reluctant….”yeah, maybe”…….

I still don’t get the reluctance….Either folks dont fully get it yet or folks have a secondary agenda to try and get everyone to buy what someone else is selling……..Not saying these guys do but just folks talking about this topic in general....I mean think about it…..You’re trying to restore the natural soil biome and structure, etc and you’re telling me you’re not sure if the natural plants will work for that. In many, many cases…..the fact will be that the natural vegetation trying to grow there during the summer months will be more well suited for the crappy conditions you’re trying to fix than will the finicky “crops” that you are going to try and introduce instead. They'll be much more drought and browse tolerant

I’m gonna answer Dr. Lashely’s fire question there at the very end that never really got answered…..He was basically asking about burning off the thatch and referencing a study that showed high microbial activity in some burned stands and how could it be a negative to burn the plots?……

My answer is that you have to keep the long term management goals in perspective with each practice that you apply and how the application and frequency of that application impacts those long term goals……In other words, in a food plot we’re trying to initially grow and then eventually maintain high levels of soil organic matter…..The process involves a debit and credit accounting equation that’s constantly occurring between the rate at which we can add biomass/turn it into humus and the rate of decomposition of that end product… ……Our goal in trying to convert and maintain a system with “regenerative” practices (if that’s what we’re going to call it) is to slow down and hold stable any decomposition of humus….aka soil organic matter….while working with each plant rotation to further build it up to richer levels and better structure.

So, with that being said……if you grow up a big stand of cereal grain biomass and then burn it off then you’ve lost that biomass that would have otherwise been fed to the soil and soil critters……Now if you’re 10 years down the road and you have rich levels of SOM built up then burning off one biomass crop here or there probably isnt going to have big negative impacts……..it would probably even help with some micronutrients and such….. On the flip side of that…..Let’s say we’re in year 1 or 2 of trying to turn around soil that was completely void of organic matter…..In this situation I dang sure want to be feeding all of that cereal grain biomass back to the soil to grow SOM levels as fast as possible….I don’t want to be burning it up. That’s where I’m saying that you gotta have some perspective on the whole process and what you’re trying to accomplish….

One of the ways I was able to grow my SOM levels so fast is because I was growing up massive grass biomass crops with every rotation and feeding it back to the soil. With my cereal grains I was adding late season applications of N and pushing out so much grass growth in the spring that I was able to mow it a couple times before letting it mature….. basically triple cropping it……The first couple of summers it grew heavy stands of nearly pure crabgrass that I fed back to the soil before eventually becoming more diverse in summers 3,4,5……Again, you gotta have some perspective here because all of these heavy grass crops in the beginning ended up growing the SOM by 0.5-1.0% per year and had me hovering around 6% by year 6-7……In the video they talk about possible being able to add 1 or 2% over a decade….That’s way off…….If you do it right you can grow the system a lot faster than that. You don’t want to be constantly burning off all the above ground biomass you’re growing though……

So someone that’s dug a little deeper into the research on this is probably going to rebut my answer with something about carbon coming from root exudates and the plant root masses……and they would be correct…….But I would compare it all to building a house……The roof of a house may be a small portion compared to the whole but yet still it serves a vital role. You’re not going to have much of a house long term without a roof……

Above ground biomass serves more of a role than just additional carbon being fed to the soil……It provides a physical shelter/home for many of the little soil critters that exist within this soil ecosystem you’re trying to build. It also serves physical roles in buffering temps……moderating rain infiltration rates…..regulating O2 exchange…..protection from erosion.....etc….So to fully answer the question about fire and burning the plots……These are all the things to consider and look for to be potentially negatively impacted if applied too frequently.

Nature will handle it all.

CNC I agree with you on lots of things that need to be took into consideration on burning.

I'm not against burning totally but I feel like the timing could be different. I will say fire is atleast natural and happens in the environment and not man made at times.

Lightening they say?

The natural fire timing in the south actually occurred now through late summer, in the lightning season. Growing season fires were the norm, not the exception.

I think there’s a big change coming with planting techniques and the need for soil building and health. It’s needed too. There’s a lot of terrible soil in AL, especially in areas with hard upland clay and sandy loams that have had all the organic top soil removed.

It's a good thing we have a great DCNR to keep things in a negative direction.

Yep.....its changing but slooooowly.......My boys turn 15 this summer......I started the first "Testing in Progress" thread back on the old QDMA forum when they were babies.....I think the $$$ is what's held it up the most......There's a lot of money tied in to doing things the conventional way that folks will have to adapt to if more folks start going the regenerative route. I figured food plotters would be a lot further along now than they are but again there's been quite a lot of resistance to the change

Once folks start really understanding what’s happening in your fields with this regenerative ag stuff and the productivity of your soil…..at some point they’re going to look over and think to themselves…..”If all of this makes this much difference on my 1 or 2 acre food plot….I wonder what would happen if I could extend these soil building principles to the whole property? How are my current management practices impacting the productivity?.....Is there something I can do to improve it?”

This will eventually lead some folks to pondering over things like cows.

People in general do not like change.

Yeah its definitely a psychological hurdle ……It’s actually a survival instinct to resist change…….We have this thing going on in our brain where we want to follow the method that is perceived to have been previously successful by the group. Bucking the system comes with risk

Dan said we need to go take some Ag classes and quit trying to reinvent the wheel..... Interesting conversation.