Doug McEvers

I have a yard full of wet, soggy leaves. I am not complaining because we have finally had normal rainfall for the last 9 weeks (5"). Went around with the penetrometer a couple of days ago and was so pleased to see soil psi much lower than in August. I have been seeding winter rye in the garden this fall when I get a space open, this effort is complete. I have had 4 different seeding dates for the rye, the last being October 26, that rye was up yesterday November 5. This is a bit of an experiment here as I want to see how late we can go into the fall with winter grain. This fall has been mild so that must be part of the equation going forward. I have a good friend in ND who has been growing winter rye (Hazlet) for many years and he says if rye germinates it will vernalize and take off next spring. This latest planting of rye came up yesterday and we were 23F this morning, will be watching this.

I plan to collect leaves and mulch the garden where there is no viable cover, the tomato bed is all that is left. The rye will get going early next spring, so I have made my gardening easier this fall with soil improvement.

From AI;    Gas Diffusion: Oxygen (O₂) moves inward from the atmosphere to support plant roots and microorganisms, while carbon dioxide (CO₂) moves outward. This process depends heavily on air-filled porosity, soil moisture, and tortuosity (the twistiness of pore paths).

This is the most important part of getting to a productive soil, soil air. Broadforking helps greatly in this regard. You are fracturing the soil with little disturbance to soil life but creating a pathway for oxygen. Also, rainfall is oxygen rich and opening of the soil to utilize the moisture is a great benefit. Dry soil curbs soil life greatly, I saw that here this summer. On this farm, as we transition to a biological soil fertility system, adequate rainfall is key. My hoped for "feed the soil to feed the plant" is not what I observed. This also shows up in a dry year on native prairie which is totally dependent on biological fertility. Soil life needs adequate moisture to function.

Timothy and Judith, this is a good discussion. I think the fall broadforking is a good idea because this fractures the soil quite deeply and will allow precipitation to rehydrate the soil profile. If the soil is hard and has some slope, meaningful rainfall could end up somewhere else and not in the growing area. We were very dry here this summer and the soil got hard. There was normal rainfall here for September but the soil is still very hard at about a 5" depth. This is enough moisture and rooting zone to grow a nice oat cover crop but the roots are stopped at that hard layer. We want the soil in a condition to take on precipitation when it is available and become a moisture reserve if and when needed. This is part of my quest here, making a connection between the topsoil and subsoil, hopefully with the roots of plants.

Young oats are very nutritious. I took a forage sample from volunteer oats the fall of 2024. The oats were about 6" tall and the crude protein was 25%. This betters almost anything in terms of forage, the deer know. I was not able to work our oat stubble until mid-September this year but the volunteer oats have done well and have made a very impressive root system in about 30 days.

Using the conversion factor of 6.25 for protein percentage to nitrogen percentage, the 25% protein oats would be about 4% nitrogen by dry weight if my math is correct. Oats are very adept at scavenging nutrients and holding them for future use.

I would start here.  https://bookstore.acresusa.com/products/grass-productivity?_pos=1&_sid=88e4944af&_ss=r

Andre Voisin, Grass Productivity

This book is a must have for any serious grazier, the introduction is by Alan Savory. Grass Productivity is a scientific look on the advantages of rotational grazing, pasture species diversity, stocking numbers and more.

Kara,

You can look on this differently. You gave this person a job and a chance to prove his worth, in time he failed. You did the right thing, he did not. I did something similar here, gave a neighbor the opportunity to work with me. I was told by others before we started, this neighbor has a bad resume. I feel it is my human responsibility to treat everyone equally, let things play out. This working relationship between my neighbor and me did not work but I gave it a chance, and I feel good about this.

This is a nice compilation and I did recognize some of the varieties. Glenn wheat and Esker oats, for instance. I am just starting to learn about different grain varieties, protected and open source (beyond variety protection). I see this database as a possible valuable tool for growers and adding more past years before October 2025 would remind us of some older varieties. So much time, money and effort goes into the development of a new variety and the 20-year protection is certainly warranted. What is becoming quite important is finding a variety that does well on your farm and in your climate. May be quite an old variety that is still available but lost in the shuffle of modern promotion and the latest and greatest craze.

Roughrider hard red winter wheat is an example of variety staying power, made available by NDSU in 1976.  https://washingtoncrop.com/documents/Archives-Wheat/RoughRider.pdf
As I understand it, Roughrider was a gamechanger in getting hard red winter wheat to survive the winters farther north in the US. This variety is still being grown locally because the milling quality is favored by bakers. My organic certifier, MOSA, has said about organic seed. If you have a variety that does well on your farm, we consider it organic. This is now part of my quest, to find varieties I can grow and save seed for future use. May be used for cover crop seed or grain production. It's really handy to have seed on hand when the conditions present themselves to take advantage of a window.

Here is something else to consider. A variety released 20 years ago may not have been suitable for a particular climate. Average length of the growing season has been increasing here, some of these older varieties may now be a perfect fit.

I get slugs in potatoes when the soil condition is too wet. Last year I flooded the garden because it had become dry and then came 9" of rain in about a month and a lot of slugs. It was so wet in the lowest area some of the deeper potatoes rotted in the ground, this is rare here. I use 48" rows and hill very high so the hills can drain well most years. Dry this year and no slugs and a very mediocre potato crop. I used some overwintered potato seed (dark red norland from last years crop) this year, green sprouted them and that row did well except for some pocket gopher competition. My other 3 rows were planted with seed purchased from a local and long-time potato farmer, same variety but those rows were not as productive, they were not green sprouted, however. I have been using an oat cover crop in the garden the last 2 years and I really like the results. This fall I have seeded some winter rye and will seed oats next spring in the areas too late for rye. I use a soil penetrometer to test for soil hardness and the extra watering in the garden really shows up this year in terms of a much lower psi reading. The one thing that really stood out was how little resistance there was below the topsoil. After the first 8 or so inches the penetrometer went down very easily to the max 36" depth. I can't do this anywhere else on the farm this season. This garden has been managed organically for the last 8 years with soil health given top billing using mulch, cover crops, minimal tillage. I was amazed when I checked the garden with the penetrometer the other day, this is the type of topsoil and subsoil connection we want to replicate with our newly organic farm fields. I have learned this very dry year our fine textured soil gets hard without enough moisture, this will improve when we get our soil organic matter in better shape. The garden is the leading indicator.

I am a corn amateur but here is something I am thinking about regarding timing and cross pollination. I have been working with MN 13 heirloom corn since 2012 or thereabout. I plant no earlier than June 1 (this year June 5) when most of the area conventional corn is planted by May 15. The MN 13 I have is thought to be an 87-day corn, most of the local conventional corn is likely 90 days. Would the same corn, some planted on May 15 and some planted on June 1 have about the same number of days to pollination? How does daylength come into play? How about the maturity difference, more days than the planting differential, again with daylength in mind.

Nice catch, Timothy. This (biointensive agriculture), from what I have just read, is human scale agriculture. How to get a whole lot of production from a minimum amount of land, sustainably. Now I have research to do on this wonderful and drizzly morning (we are dry here). The deep double digging is very interesting, I have hard soil when the year is dry. There is much written about tillage, when, how deep and how to provide a refuge for soil life. According to some, tillage should be only in the top 4 or so inches, The soil beneath is left undisturbed and the roots of crops will burrow their way down and loosen the soil below. It is a slow process here to get roots going down in hard soil for farm crops, weeds do much better. A couple of renowned soil experts tell of the need for deep tillage (ripping) from time to time to make the topsoil and subsoil connection. The double digging technique mirrors this.