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SE IL and SW IN | I found this wandering in my corn field which means that holes were dug and lessons given.
Sorry for the quality of the second pix, but by the time I manipulated it to see the contrast, it was black and white. This is continuous corn in hairy vetch with radishes in 30' rows. The corn was planted directly over the old row and the radish row is beneath the knife. Notice that the corn roots followed the old root mass nearly perfectly with the exception of the roots that formed in the old radish zone. I am not sure if it the path of least resistance, or seeking nutrients from the decaying roots. This field has been in the continuous corn/hairy vetch program for 10 years and the effects of any one soil building activity is dampened by the fact that it is greatly improved over baseline.
As a side note, I counted 42 earthworms in a cubic foot of soil in the root zone, and only 28 in a cubic foot in the row middle. The residue from the previous corn crop is nearly gone, as are the leaves from the hairy vetch.
Edited by tntfarm 6/30/2011 11:34
 (2011-06-29 0121056.jpg)
 (2011-06-29 0041055.jpg)
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 2011-06-29 0121056.jpg (94KB - 117 downloads)
2011-06-29 0041055.jpg (63KB - 107 downloads)
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Continuous no-till corn in hairy vetch and radishes
