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Anyone read "Dirt, The Erosion of Civilizations"? + Questions
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paul the original
Posted 3/19/2014 08:12 (#3762705 - in reply to #3762409)
Subject: RE: Anyone read "Dirt, The Erosion of Civilizations"? + Questions


southern MN		In my back yard, the worst erosion I saw is sheet erosion from typical heavy late spring early summer rains combined with row crop cultivators.

That made a mini creek bed every 3 feet with soft loose topsoil on the rolling hills.

The next cultivation you would see bare roots of your crop on the hill, and couldn't hardly follow the row it was covered in silt on the bottom.

Plowing with a molboard plow, or chisel, or other heavy tillage in my back yard has very little erosion that I can see. Fall heavy tillage leaves big chunky soil that slows any water flow, filtering out any erosion to inches, not 100s of feet of silt movement. As well here it freezes up and snow covers a couple days or weeks after tillage. Spring that happens fairly slowly, one drip at a time and again the rough surface makes slow, filtered runoff. With the frozen ground and snow cover, the sun isn't cooking out nutrients, the wind doesn't catch much of this type of soil. Heavy fall tillage is mostly a non issue.

So, chemical weed control is the big soil conservation tool here in my back yard, row crop cultivation was the bad deal. Molboard plows are still very popular, and seem to only move soil 16-20 inches, then back again the following year.

Again, in my back yard. Sure is different in other soils, other climates, and I realize that.

Paul
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