Spring butter cups are not forage that I want to produce. We use no herbicides or commercial fertilizer. Our management is through mowing and goat grazing. It is of limited utility. So far I have found only one thing that consistently erases the buttercups from the pastures---June. The plant has a short life span and as the weather warms up it dies out.
This year we will be experimenting with biological farming technique to keep the butter cups at bay. The idea is simple--heavy grass trumps most weeds so in order to have fewer weeds I want to produce more grass. We will over seed cool season grasses in this pasture in late February. Seed is only part of the equation. We will work hard to give those seeds a chance to flourish by experimenting with natural microbes to strengthen the soil.
About a year and a half ago we buried a 450 gallon hot tub tank to be flush with the ground. By doing so we insulated the tank well below the freeze line in even our coldest of nights. The tank was filled with horse manure that had been sitting in our pastures for various periods of time. Only a minimal amount of the manure was fresh. Very small amounts of rotten wood and old hay was added over time. After several months I added a few thousand Red Wiggler worms. Occasional coffee grounds were added to the mix.
I turned the composting mass religiously with a pitch fork for months. The worms flourished and the manure completely broke down into soil, showing none of its former physical characteristics. It just looked like potting soil.
As the mound decreased into a flat layer we added more manure--likely over a ton, a few hundred pounds at a time. I put in more straw and old hay.
The worms went forth and multiplied.
A week ago today we put perhaps 750 pounds of very dry manure from the pastures on top of the completely broken down vermicompost. I covered that with the contents of a molded small square bale of hay. The weather has been warm over the past week. After four days I found no worm activity in the new manure that we had placed on top of the hot tub tank.
After six days the worms had permeated the top three inches of the manure, just under the molded hay layer. Without a doubt we have a tremendous renewable source of microbes brewing constantly in this mixture.
I suspect that bringing in additional forms of microbia will only enhance the mixture's soil building capacity. Chickens roam freely at the Little House. Rabbits are also raised there. The girls maintain a conventional compost pile outside and the chickens have access to it. They scratch though it and then go over to sections of the yard where they scratch and forage, carrying microbes on their beaks and feet.
The result amazes me. The soil where they scratch has become light and fluffy. Soil compaction is eliminated in those areas. Microbial action below the surface has worked wonders for that soil.
I will take five gallons of that soil and add it to the vermicompost. A year ago I began cutting down trees on the New Land. Many saplings and branches have been laying there since that time. I recently began chipping and shredding those trees. I will bring over a few buckets of ash and gum shredding and add those to the mix.
As the winter comes to an end I will experiment using both surface spreading of this mixture in some pastures and a tea mix spraying in others in order to see how to get our best advantage from all of this free fertilizer.
And at this moment, all across suburbia, people are having leaves removed from their yards, their lawns "winterized" in preparation for the spring's application of poison and fertilizer. One can drive out from suburbia into the country side to watch farmers mowing the remainder of their crop wastes and tilling them into the ground, leaving bare soil exposed all winter, also in preparation for the spring's application of poison and fertilizer.
And at this moment, all across America, people who spend their life worrying about being around "germs" are dying from cancer.
A lot of people make a lot of money from the production and sale of those poisons. A lot of people make a lot of money from the production and sale of those fertilizers.
And a few people make a lot of money from the production and sale of coffins and caskets.
And nobody makes a lot of money from growing good microbes.
Producing life is not as good for the economy as destroying it.
1 comment:
Once upon a time every farmer had chickens. I wonder how much difference to soil fertility that simple change has made?
P.S. If this has show up a second time, delete it. The new reCAPTCHA is being weird.
P.P.S. I'm still not sure it went, so am trying a 3rd time. Those tiny images are really difficult to tell exactly what is in them (and I am not admitting that it could have anything to do with my age).
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