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Germany, Cottbus |
In my mind.... i`ve seen enough old alfalfa stands coming out with 1.1%om ...its not just a matter of what is done, but how its done.
Carbon sequestriation is a matter of good to superb plant nutrition with good photosynthesis , energy beeing translocated to the roots
and therefore the microbiom. Ad on this, that the soil must be capable of giving these creatures a home.
Ioran, I love what you are doing and the presentations about this. Alfalfa is the fodderlegume with the widest C:N of roots of all the fodderlegumes , so even promoting
fungi in soil if spores are there. Legumes, even when killed, can provide lots of nitrogen but also contribute carbon with this. So I think theres no point of
promoted priming effect for combusting carbon , through the nitrogencontribution of the legume.
Anyway, I think there is a point in management. Alfalfa has a great taproot with capability of doing great for a steady poresystem to great depht. But what its not
good at, is creating hoizontal armor in the topsoil. This , together with lots of traffic for harvesting can contribute to collabse of spore space of topsoil in old stands.
And there she`s gone... the miracle of the microbiom breathing in and out , proliferating and thereby storing more complex carboncompounds.
There aswell is the point of diversity. Because of this, I like to have grasses in my alfalfa. We need lots of diversity for the microbiom to be diverse and to be more efficient
in catching the carbon and cycling it, not just feeding on and let it go with the next breath.
And there is the point of fertilizing rigth. If you see lots of dandelion in your alfalfa and all you do is looking for an herbicide....carbon sequestration is also gone... Dandelion
help you with diversity, but what they realy do is try to tell the grower that the alfalfa has a lack of plant available calcium , sulfur and boron and maybe even more... so better
get these things on and see what happens...
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what if carbon does not collect as thought/intended?
