Not the way I thought this would go. I knew it would start a discussion but I didn't think it go quite that downhill.

It’s all good. I thought the thread was going well. A little entertainment never hurt a thread about dirt anyways and the one thing you can be guaranteed of is that people will always slow down to rubberneck at the train wreck. It’ll just strike up more interest in the long run.

The biggest problem is that as soon as you use the words “I disagree”…folks start getting butt hurt.

I'm outa town , away from the puter a couple of days and come home to this..... again. I'm not gonna quit using my beloved Taylor Way disk, guess I'll see the rest of you plowing thick heads in food plot hell.

X3 If I weren't in a area where it's pretty much impossible to use a buggy , I'd be all over this. I spread fertilizer once with a buggy and coming off steep hills is a little more excitement than I want . I have some friends that are close to the Co-op and plot down in the valley (flat land) and the buggy fertilizer/seed spreading works very well for them. BTW, they disc as well, a 100HP+ JD and 12' disk, least I'm gonna be amongst friends in food plot hell.

Correct Sir. Get yer soil PH right, scratch the ground with a plow, throw and mow or no-till with a fancy planter, fertilize and relax. Doesn't 't matter if ya only have a leaf blower and rake, 4 wheeler and tiny disk or a 200hp JD with real farming equipment , it ain't hard folks!

2Dogs have they ever mixed the seed and fertilizer the day before they spread it?

I never have so I really don't know if that particular caution is for real or just an old wives tale.

Not sure, but I think they do it the day of.

I think where the problem would be is if it's hot the N turns liquid on ya. Can be a big problem in this part of the world.

Furflyin……Here’s what I don’t get. There's always folks who jump into the discussion telling about how much experience they have or how many acres they farm..... but the discussion into anything deeper concerning the finer details of soil health never goes any further than…”Just trust me, I’m a farmer" or someone throwing out credentials. By all means, share some of your trials and tribulations with us. Why will no-till not work? What cover crops have you tried? What failed?…etc..etc. …Did you have issues with hard pans and compaction?

I'm not going to debate you all night long. I don't have a photographic record of everything I've ever planted. I'm not the one trying to sell people on a different method.

Here's the results on one small area that I worked on to improve soil fertility and soil composition. I took an area on a farm that we bought where the soil was very poor and would barely grow weeds and turned it into a rich, organic rich soil in 3 years. I planted it in soybeans the first summer and they grew about a foot tall and that was it. Each fall I planted Ryegrass and Crimson clover. Each spring for 3 years I turned the biomass under and then planted beans again. This is what the beans looked like during the 3rd summer. Hard pans and compaction are much more likely when soil is worked when it is wet. This area has alfalfa growing on it now. It's thriving due to the prep work that I did over a few year period. This is a picture of production soybeans, NOT forage beans.



I never said no til won't work. You push it as a cure all. It's not. In the truest sense of the term no til farming is done with a no til drill or no til planter. There are NO commercial farmers who use a spread and grow approach to planting seeds. There is a reason for that. It's not a reliable method of planting. Ryegrass, fescue, clovers, brassicas and etc can be spread into an existing pastures or bushogged weed stands and grow just fine due to the small size of the seed. Throw and grow does not involve tilling but it is not the same as no til farming. Throw and grow is NOT a good idea in areas where turkeys are abundant. It is also not a good idea on plots that have no organic matter build up, like most food plots in this state.

Hard pan and soil compaction are a function of soil that is overworked and worked when it's wet. Weekend warrior food plot planters will likely not have to worry about it since they primarily just cut the soil with a disk. If they cut it to a powder each year, then yes they may encounter.

Here's a 1150 lb cow in the same bean patch for size comparison of the beans.

Advantage Fur, that may be the finest bean field on Sand Mt! Didn't know sand could grow beans that look that good!

I wish I had comparison pictures of 3 years earlier. It took intense soil improvements to get the patch where it would grow beans like this. The first year the beans only got about mid shin high, and I innoculated them the first year.

Nice looking beans. Thanks for sharing Furflyin. Have you given radishes a try? They would be a great addition to add to your rye and clover rotation for the purpose of producing organic matter deep in the soil profile. This one is just a medium sized one compared to the size that they can get. Lots of good worm food.

Nothing gonna grow where that bammer hat is laying for a while

Yes, I've planted Diakon radishes. I am going to try some Ground Hog radishes too. They do a great job of pulling nutrients back up to the top of the soil and also aerate the soil.

That’s a good point Fur….In the same way that the radish helps improve aeration, it also helps improve water infiltration. Here’s where our opinions may part ways though. A radish improves soil aeration and water infiltration by growing deep into the soil and creating a channel down through the soil profile. Its when the radish begins to decay that space is created between the soil and the shrinking radish bulb. It’s this space that’s created that allows the oxygen to move down deep into the soil. It’s the space between the decaying radish and the soil that allows water to run down into the soil and infiltrate much more efficiently. The same thing occurs when worms begin to tunnel in the soil. An elaborate conduit system is formed that will allow large amounts of rainfall to infiltrate into the ground instead of ponding and running off. This is part of good “soil structure”. If we come in and till, then all of that structure is lost. All of that space between the radish bulb and the soil is gone…..all the worm tunnels are destroyed. You no longer have that structure present anymore. It all collapses when the soil is disturbed and soil particles pack together again. When this happens then our field loses its ability to handle water as efficiently. Water movement plays a huge role whether we’re talking about moisture availability to the plants, erosion potential, movement of nutrients, etc....

FurFlyin, you have incredible looking plots. Thanks for not swearing the disk away, either.

Here's an illustration that kinda helps show what I'm talking about. You can see how the channels that were left in the soil by the radish would allow air and water to infiltrate. This reminds me of another benefit too of having that structure remain present. The channels allow for the roots of future plants to follow their path down deep into the soil. This only happens though if you leave the structure intact.

The decaying matter is still there creating space as it decays when you disc. Discing it into the soil is not removing this material.

I’m not saying that the radish is lost and doesn’t provide any OM…..I’m saying that the “structure” it created while growing is lost. Look back at the last illustration. All of those root tunnels are lost when tillage occurs. The radish is chopped into finer pieces and the decaying process rapidly speeds up. Now, for the purpose of feeding the next crop in line this can be seen as having positive effects because the rapid decay releases nutrients that are quickly available and able to feed the next crop. However, from a long-term perspective, any further OM gains are going to be hard to achieve due to the rapid burning of the OM. Slowing down the decay won’t have the quick nutrient release seen with tillage but over the course of several rotations, the overall fertility will increase to higher levels than what could initially be achieved with only a a single quick burning of OM. In other words, you are going to sacrifice some of the nutrient release to the first crop following a cover crop in order to build higher levels of OM over time and reach higher overall fertility levels year round….not just after a quick OM burn. I don’t doubt that Fur has seen OM increases from using cover crops. I suspect though that if he tested his OM% he would see it reach, or has already reached, a small plateau where he is not actually growing OM any further beyond just what each single cover crop is burning and providing. This small peak is just a fraction of the soil’s true potential.

Fur…..Have you thought about adding some diversity to your bean patch? Sunn hemp, pearl millet, buckwheat, alyce clover, and milo are all good options. From the standpoint of growing OM, its always good to add in a “grass” specie. Grasses are your major carbon producers. Sunn hemp even though not technically considered a grass specie is still a good producer of carbon. This pic was taken a few weeks after planting. It never made it to maturity....too many deer on too few acres.