Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Minimal to No Fertilizer Fields

Anyone do this for their green fields? If so, what do you do to achieve this etc? Buffalo system? Perennial clovers?

Did your lime help your plots last year ? I hope i can lime this year - helped bunch few years back

Throw and mow and not breaking ground supposed to be good. I finally did not plow last year - sprayed and threw after everything died before a good rain. Few of my clover plots i sprayed to kill everything but the clover but i did fertilize but i prob do on light side every year

Excited to see down there. I am buying some property closer to the house and looking into trying the no till/drilling method there. Looking at other options that work etc

Focus on building organic matter first and foremost.......

Quantity per Acre: Each 1% of organic matter in the top 6 inches of soil contains roughly \(1,000\) to \(2,000\) pounds of total nitrogen per acre.

Available Nitrogen: Because most of this nitrogen is locked up in complex molecules, only about 1% to 3% becomes available (mineralized) to plants each year. This equates to roughly 10 to 30 pounds of usable nitrogen per acre annually for every 1% of organic matter.

If you have green fields like we do in Coosa County, that are just to hard to get a lime buggy to them, what do you suggest? We can cut our fields and disk them, but getting someone to pull a lime buggy to each field is extremely hard. We can throw fertilizer from ATV spreaders with no problem, but getting lime to them is the problem.

I’d apply 800 lbs/acre of Pelletized lime each year until pH approached 6.5. Then maintain with approximately 400 lbs each year to maintain. At current pricing that’s $140/$70 per acre. Cheaper than fertilizer currently.

There are liquid fertilizer options you can use until you get pH in the desired range.

Your soil CEC will determine how fast the pH changes and also how long you can go between lime applications. Low CEC = change with less lime per acre but shorter residual time. Improving OM % as CNC mentioned is about the only way to improve CEC. Use crops like millet and sorghum with dense root systems to improve OM and do not do deep tillage.

Build organic matter through no till or throw and mow planting techniques. Rotate crops of summer legumes and winter grains with annual clovers.

Check out ,,,,, sun hemp

Sunn Hemp is awesome, especially if you have a flail mower to terminate. It doesn’t do real well with a rotary cutter if still green. It tends to ball up.

So what rotation would yall suggest or yall use?

You've wnna bush hog sun hemp when it get 4 1/2 or 5 feet tall. Taller it gets tougher it gets

I haven't disced in close to 10 years. I've always bushogged, then sprayed, then planted wheat and red clover (or similar) in the fall. Top sowed. Wheat serves as a "nurse crop" for the clover. Also a big fan of brassicas like rape. Fields always turn out great and probably 1/4 the time of discing endlessly.

Clovers, "weeds", and cereal grains

Soil test and start getting ph correct. Throw and mow and use summer time nitrogen fixers. Definitely look into the clovers.

Did throw and mow years ago and helped build organic matter
QDMA forum had some guys that were into and gave me advice. I threw out pelletized like I had a chance.

I’ve been doing throw and mow only for six years with ever improving results. I have added lime(pelletized because my property needs neither justify the quantity demanded for a buggy and I don’t have a tractor). I have about 1.5acres total over 5 little plots so this works well for me. I never clear the table. Something is growing all the time in my plots.
I take regular soil samples to check progress and I keep printed copies in a notebook, arranged by plot, with notes on what I added, when and how much. My rotation is cereals and clovers in late October or November, mow over existing plot to cover. Chicory early spring broadcast into cereals. Just planted Alyce clover, joint vetch and sunn hemp a couple weeks ago. I plan to cut the hemp off to knee or waist height with my commercial hedge clippers a couple times(this is only in one 0.3ac plot.
I struggle with brassicas since they need to be planted in August or early September and it’s either super dry or the army worms get them.

There’s a great series of videos from Green Cover seeds that feature a lady scientist from Australia which covers a lot of science regarding nutrients and farming(plotting). Perhaps the most enlightening for the question in this thread is the episode on phosphorus, the Phosphorus Paradox I think it’s titled. Great discussion on how living soils make nutrients available without artificial inputs.

Green manures some call them
CNC seems to be on top of it but basically cover cropping in ag is similar. Bare ground loses carbon so you don’t want bare ground and something always growing. Organic farming methods dip into the situation too.

I had a book from them years ago
https://rodaleinstitute.org/

Put the lube down CNC that thing will blow up