Doug McEvers

Used to be a lot of purslane in our garden. With soil improvement it has all but disappeared. Not saying it is a poverty weed but it does not seem to flourish in better soil. I believe it favors soil that has little structure, over tilled.

The US corn belt was formerly tallgrass prairie. Farmers are still taking advantage of the fertility the prairie built over those many years, 150 plus years and counting on some of the earlier homesteaded farms. We are at 146 years here since my great grandfather, Christopher settled here. We have declared our farm to be a living, learning, and sharing farm. Slightly under one half of this farm is tillable acres and the balance is in long term grassland, some native and some restored. We started comprehensive soil health testing last fall on our differing land use acres. The native grassland is running between 4 and 5 % organic matter vs the 2 % or less for the tillable acres. It is thought that each percent of soil organic matter (SOM) is equal to about 20 pounds of nitrogen per acre. As we build our SOM on the tillable acres the need for purchased fertilizer will be much less, we are working at growing our own fertility. This will be accomplished with crop rotation and cover crops. A really true balanced rotation would include about 5 years in grassland to maintain long term fertility. Charles Darwin placed stones in a pasture and observed the stones sank 7" into the soil surface after 29 years, nearly 1/4" of topsoil was built each year with help off the grassland and the earthworms.

Getting back to the garden and its fertility. I have learned some in watching the garden and its organic transformation and we are applying this to our production acres. If you saw my garden right now you might say what a mess ! But when you till a bit around the potato plants the earthworms have put out the "do not disturb" sign. So we carefully garden with the grasses and the oats planted a month ago. The garden plants get daylighted and the rest is left to grow and build the soil. I keep the annual grasses from going to seed with an occasional mowing during the summer. I am a member of the Minnesota Soil Health Coalition. Here are the soil building tenants.

Reduce disturbance
Cover the soil
Increase diversity
Keep a living root
Integrate livestock when possible

Apologies if I linked this article before, here it goes again.

https://www.mofga.org/stories/farming/martens-farm/

Klaas Martens talks about non mycorrhizal weeds and why they take off.  The weeds get the all clear signal because the mycorrhizae are not in sufficient numbers to take up the soil nutrients. This is why I try to do a cover crop along with the garden plants, to make the environment less favorable for weeds.  Soil is not meant to be bare; the weeds are indicators of fertility and also sufficient amounts of certain nutrients. Phosphorus and lambsquarters for instance.

As I understand it oats when hayed or grazed will not make grain. Would be interested in spring seeding winter rye as a cover before planting row crops, not a lot of information on this. I am told this is done quite often in the northeast US. Building organic matter is paramount in gardens or on farms. I have oats planted in my garden and will let them grow until they start shading out garden plants and then only cut back what is needed. Hard to preserve the oats in the rows of potatoes as I hill quite extensively. What I do is bury any and all vegetation between the rows when the potatoes are dug, leveling the area.

Kevin Olson,

Your post on winter wheat productivity is quite noteworthy. My neighbors in western MN planted winter wheat the fall of 2024. The stand was very good and they harvested a large crop in 2025. They did an incorporation of the wheat stubble and got a nice volunteer crop in the fall of 2025, made a great winter cover. Now this spring they are working in the green winter wheat to plant corn. They essentially had 4 soil building crops from just one seeding and they also took some straw from the 2025 harvest. Not much winter wheat planted around here and I am not sure why. Will likely plant some on this farm in the fall, I like what my neighbors did.

Hard red winter wheat is much different than hard red spring wheat in terms of straw production. Spring wheat has become very short and does not produce much straw. In the total equation one must include the straw (brown carbon) as part of the yield. Winter wheat is much like winter rye in terms of soil building and biomass. A winner I believe if you are looking to raise your soil organic matter.

Jim,

I would look to nature's way on how milkweed disperses and increases. Common milkweed is a very cool plant with the silk as the wings for the seed. Naturally the milkweed shatters in the fall and the seed lays on the ground over winter. The freeze/thaw cycle is used in many seeding applications, and this helps to integrate the seeds with the soil. Cold stratification is nothing more than mimicking the non-growing season. Common milkweed is quite a large seed, and I would just cover them with a thin layer of soil, they increase by rhizomes. I can't say as to the type soil they prefer but are found in the tallgrass prairie region along with swamp milkweed, a beautiful flower and plant.

I am with Catie, rhubarb likes rich soil. We have 2 patches growing on our farm, one an older variety and one I would call more modern.  Give them a bit of biological fertilizer when I think of it and an occasional watering when it has been dry.  Otherwise, they seem to be an auto pilot, for decades now. No special treatment in the fall. Not a rhubarb fan myself but someone is always interested in the young shoots, quite a beautiful plant. Does not expand into the adjoining grasses, has its niche and stays right there.

We have the big fire ants on our prairie grasslands. They have high mounds, 18" or so and they are in the same place for what seems like decades. I do not disturb as they are a part of the complex prairie ecosystem. I also love the smaller burrowing ants that show up soon after a burn, they leave small mounds and are the first sign of life after the beneficial burning. Modern man has been led astray in the vilification of bugs and weeds, these are mother nature's unpaid workers and should be welcomed for the hard work they do.

I stand corrected on the prairie ants as they are not a fire ant as such, but they do bite.

AI Overview    

Prairie biting ants, often field ants (Formica spp.) or prairie mound ants (Formica montana), are native insects that build large, 1–2 foot high, 3–4 foot wide, or greater, soil mounds in open grasslands and meadows. They are crucial for soil aeration but can inflict painful bites, releasing formic acid, if disturbed.

Decker Corn Sheller

https://www.deckermfg.com/store/c9/hardware-specialties/p69/50-cs/

The best way to dry corn is to leave it on the cob until you need it, corn cribs used to dot the landscape. I use one of these hand shellers to strip kernels from my MN 13 heirloom field corn. I cut off the narrow end of the cob as these seeds are the least developed, the butt end kernels are fine and possibly the most highly developed but may not be the best for using in a mechanical planter. The flats are the standard of the industry if you are looking to conform, I may be jeopardizing my lifelong counterculture status with this.

The soil building properties of small grains must be part of the equation. Winter rye is likely the best because it spans 2 growing seasons, the root system is phenomenal, especially on fine soils.  We have early seeded oats on all of our tillable acres this spring, some will be left for harvest on our new transitional acres. The balance will get a very shallow incorporation and then a row crop planted. I have oats growing in my garden and will just knife in the garden seeds and let the oats do their thing. Our goal is to feed the soil life first and then let the long days of summer have their way. In 2024 we seeded oats in the spring on our 1st year transitional tillable acres. We harvested a decent and quality oat crop in August. The straw and residue were shallowly incorporated soon after harvest and we got a beautiful volunteer oat cover crop to take us through the winter. 2 crops in one season with a living root in the ground for 6 months. Used some of the 2024 oat crop as seed for this year's cover which we no tilled into last year's soybean stubble. Minimize soil disturbance and good things should follow.