Farm Fertility Plan

I love the field I’m farming ...primarily for it’s town-accessible location, and also for the good drainage over most of the site.  The soils are all loams, with some nearer to clay loams and others almost sandy loams with a bit of gravel.  These changes reflect differing topographic positions across the site, as you move from an old floodplain down a small slope to an ancient river channel.

With regard to soil fertility, however, the place could use some help.  Unlike most of the fields in the Arcata bottoms, this one doesn’t seem to have been limed much.  The pH ranged from 5.3 to 5.6 before I started adding lime.  The place has also been exporting hay (and nutrients) for many years, and the infrequent mowing did not favor legumes.  A soil test (and crop growth) showed nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels ranging from medium to low across the three sampled zones, with calcium, sulfur, and boron being low throughout.

While there are organic amendments to address all of these shortcomings, cost is a limiting factor. I had to decide where to begin, knowing that I couldn’t afford a complete makeover all at once.  The plan I came up with for a starting point was:  1 ton/acre of lime, 1/2 ton/acre of rock phosphate (mixed with a tiny amount of Fertibor Boron), 10 yards/acre of composted cow manure, and 1 ton/acre of chicken manure; to be combined with seasonal cover cropping.  So far, the results have been good, but I’ll need to keep it up in order to bring fertility levels to where I need them to be.  In the short term, higher levels of chicken manure are going to be the most economical way to get me through, but I’d like to move away from this as time goes on (find out why in the next posting).  I’m definitely going to keep up the liming and I’d like to keep adding phosphate, but I’m not sure I can afford it.

My longer term plan involves putting two of my six annual-crop acres into a year-long cover crop, and rotating through these fields.  This should really help reduce my input needs, while building soil O.M. and smothering weeds.

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