Thanks.......I did not spray the rye. I waited until early May when it had already gone to seed to mow it. Once its in that latter stage of its life then all you have to do is mow it to terminate it. In the meantime it does a great job of weed suppression. That stand actually did too good of a job and smothered out all my clover as well. It would have probably been a good idea to have mowed it once in the spring the thin it out a little and give the clover some room. All of that you'll have to play be ear though because its really site specific. The same exact mix at my hunting club looked much different. The deer completely consumed all of the rye and we didnt have a single bit left over in the spring.

I added lime this spring to initially pick my Ca levels up out of the gutter. I knew last year that my pH was low but I wanted to wait a little longer to build some OM on top of the soil before I brought in a lime truck. Nutrient management is a little different using the no-til approach. You'll have to give me some time to think about how I want to explain that one. A very brief explanation would be to say the we're trying to continuously build more nutrient holding capacity and continually fill up or "top off" a larger bucket of nutrients each year.....instead of the old way of keeping our nutrient holding capacity at a bare minimum and only adding more nutrients when the bucket is empty.

No....I did not cultipack.

It kind of depends on when you're planting. If its spring and you already have weeds coming up then you'll definitely want to spray to set the weeds back.....if not they'll have the head start on what you're trying to plant because the weeds are already established and growing. Your seed needs to sprout and establish itself ahead of any competition. The only way you really need to plant without spraying is if your mowing will terminate the current crop of plants. I'm going to plant this way at my hunting club this year because all that is left in the fields now are summer annuals that shouldn't come back after I mow them and plant in October. Its mostly things like black eyed susans and a little dog fennel. The same thing if you planted a summer crop of things like corn, beans, whatever.....mowing late in the season would terminate without having to spray.

I'll throw these pics in just to reiterate what I was saying before.....

This is dirt. Its just finely ground up parent material from below. It does not have all of the required components of a healthy soil ecosystem. It merely the base ingredient for a more complex recipe



This is that dirt beginning to form into soil after combining it with carbon rich organic matter from above......



We want our soil to be full of life like this. The plants and the soil are tied together as one. These little critters play a role in healthy plant growth. Everything is tied together......each serving its own unique function in making the cycle go around and around.

CNC if you had an area in the Midwest that is in CRP and has been for years would you attempt a mow and grow plot? I am pretty sure the current grasses in the CRP would serve as a decent thatch layer. What I am unsure of is the thick fescue preventing seed to soil contact. I know the fescue has gone dorminate or will shortly. I would like to try this adject to one of my smaller plots without all the workI did to plant the little field. If it fails no big deal as I have a nice plot already estiblished. However I would like to make it bigger if this process would have a decent chance of growing in CRP.

Sure makes looking for artifacts rather impossible with the no till method

when you refer to spraying, what are we spraying? to kill all or just some of the vegetation

I feel ya Flats.....I like looking for points too

They're talking about glyphosate (roundup) kills everything.

Ok, in an earlier post CNC referred to OM (organic matter correct?) by spraying roundup(kill all spray) want that destroy the organic matter that you are trying to put back into the ground?

I do know that you have to start somewhere, so where? What can I start doing to get to the no till approach. Maybe to late for this year but what about next year?

Its really hard to say without seeing it but I think your on the right track with your concerns. You need to make sure that the seed will be able to fall down through the thatch on onto the soil surface before you cover it.

By saying that we are adding organic matter to the soil, it’s the carbon that we are really looking for. You could think of carbon as being what’s left over after a plant completely dries out. A corn stalk has a lot of carbon left over for example…..a stick of wood has even more……a stalk of clover has very little. This is where a term carbon to nitrogen ratio comes into play or C/N ratio. In order to stay ahead of decomposition rates then you need to feed your soil plants that are high in carbon. These tend to be your grass species. Your soil basically runs off of carbon as the fuel source that drives the cycle……but its actually the microbial community that’s really doing the feeding and turning the corn stalk into black soil. You aren’t really directly feeding the stalk of corn to the soil. You are directly feeding it the tiny carbon processing microbial community…..things like nematodes and fungi. This is why its not necessary to turn under organic matter in order to feed it to the soil. You have millions of tiny microbes to do it for you…..that is, you’re suppose to have a vibrant community of millions microbes present anyways. Tillage is not very friendly to our microbes. They need a hospitable environment to live in first where a food source is present and the environmental conditions are favorable for them to thrive. Start looking at it from the standpoint that you have soil animals that must be cared for. They need the same things that any other animal needs….food, shelter, water.

Do you have shelter for your soil and soil animals? That is one of the first steps that needs addressing for someone converting over to no-till from a tillage system. You need to get the soil surface covered with a layer of thatch. This will be the most trying time and likely some of your uglier plots due to your soil surface being hard and crusty. Once you get a good layer of thatch down across it though, it will begin to change the soil surface to become something that’s more like a rotten paper towel. When this happens, germination rates will improve greatly. Here’s a few of the other benefits that we see from covering our soil….

Temperature regulation
Gas regulation……this slows down decomposition rates
Moisture retention
Improved water infiltration
Erosion prevention

Here's a good video to watch when you get time. Watching these videos will really help you begin to understand this stuff better.

The Soil Food Web

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKTcbLbb2Wc

Another good video to watch:

Jill Clapperton: Soil Health Principles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z-r30mKP3c

This one takes a minute to get going but this is a good video straight from the farmer. The camera man wakes up at about the 3 minute mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiffwu52udU

CNC,
Thanks for the help and the links, just got back to the computer so will give everything a look.

Good posts!!!

Thanks yall, this is starting to make a lot of sense to me. We have been doing more work and destroying our soil. I am definitely going to have to give this a try.

I farm for a living and own the best, most modern no-till planters built. CNC is 100% on with his advise. However, there is no better therapy in the world than hooking up a disk and turning a field. Discing is still required to smooth ruts and fill low spots in fields. Mother Nature rebuilds organic matter quickly with cover crops. There is no drink, drug, or doctor, that can cure a man's stress like discing a river bottom field.