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“Burning Organic Matter” ???
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paul the original
Posted 12/10/2018 10:41 (#7161694 - in reply to #7161520)
Subject: RE: “Burning Organic Matter” ???


southern MN
A couple fields over from mine, about 4 muck/ peat bogs over, a field actually did burn, smolder, for over 24 months back in the 1930s from what I have heard. It wasn’t surface fire, it followed veins of peat underground.

I recall Greywolfs seminar again, years ago, where some of this was explained in chunks I could understand and digest.

Soil microbes, in the heat, use up the organic matter. They ‘burn’ it as they eat. The process releases plant nutrients, so it is why we want the microbes and what we actually want to happen, slowly and at the right times.

Down south they want to slow that process down, their soils are often thin, burnt out, om used up.

Up here in the north we want it to happen, anyhow in mid to late summer, as the process releases nutrients for the crop. Our northern soils anyhow in the middle and east where the glaciers didn’t scrape all the topsoil off tends to be higher in om because of the deeper topsoil and cold climate, and even the saturation of the soil from wet conditions locks up the microbes and stops them from eating so much.

It is always hard to see things that aren’t in our own back yard. In general those folk in hot dry climate have their ground burnt up and will benefit greatly from trying to slow or stop the microbes much of the year. Those in the wetter north with good top and sub soils the microbes are naturally slowed down and it would be a smaller issue.

My soils at 9 or more om can be a handful to work with. I kinda wish those microbes would eat a little faster there in those spots.....

4-7 soils seem nice to work with. It probably would be nice of me to work on keeping them closer to 7, but they appear to stay where they are with what I’m doing.

The hill tops and a few sand knobs that are 2-3 organic matter I could imporve on.

Since my area is rolling hills I encounter all of the above stuff in about any round on my fields. Often I cycle through all three types 3-5 times per round! So ‘simple’ whole field fixes it’s hard to address fixing too high and too low all at the same time.

Dad ran the main tile and beat the snot out of the ground with heavy tillage fall and spring since the 1950s. Most of the farm was tilled since the 1860s, horse plows and spring tillage, that’s 160+ years of plowing.

Dads way was Disk and plow in fall, harrow, disk, disk, harrow, plant, harrow, 3 row crop cultivation’s every year. That ground was turned and blackened and loosened often.

Now rippers or chisel plows in fall, and one field cultivator pass in spring is the normal tillage as far as the eye can see.

As someone mentioned, we might be around the organic matter equilibrium here as it doesn’t change much, my patches of 9.3 don’t come down, my patches of 2.6 don’t come up much.

The fall chisel plowing is a lot more trashy, and the spring single pass vs the old pre chemical days of 7 spring and summer tillage passes has really reduced the erosion, and erosion was the issue around here.

Burning organic matter wasn’t such a big issue. “Here.” In some cases, burning up excess organic matter by stimulating the microbes is a good thing.

As we try to micro manage and improve our farming in small increments now, it certainly is something to consider, and throw into the mix even up here.

It is probably not the holy grail up north here that it can and should be in southern and western light dry soils.

Paul
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