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South Central MN | Adding more residue with high residue crops does also increase the speed at which microbes digest the old, just because they have a lot more food. Supposedly takes a long time to build OM% but some claim to build much faster, depends on management practices I guess. A couple fields I no-tilled corn into this spring had all the soybean residue gone by harvest, almost looked like COC ground, busy worms for sure in one.
Despite all the rain this year the best spot of corn in one field was in the 9%+ OM peat, and worst was the 2.9% sand pocket. Even the average ground on the other side of the hill didn't do near as well as the peat. The sand I see every year, no surprise but the peat pocket did better than expected, even though it was last deep tilled in 2016. Mother nature seems to decide what will do best in a given year no matter what we try to accomplish.
Read a saying once that still holds true, we know more about rocks on the surface of the moon than we do the biology of the soil that we stand on. | |
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“Burning Organic Matter” ???
