Saturday, December 13, 2008

Last trip to the field!

Had to get back out into the field today, on a Saturday, to get a few photos of the organic matter accumulation in my fields again. Here's a shot of an armadillo "throw" which buried my organic matter with about two inches of soil.
Emma came with me too! She just can't resist pulling soil samples! Notice how the weeds are in rows, the same rows in which we grew collards. That's because we tilled those rows. Where we didn't till, there aren't weeds. This shows that no-till suppresses weeds, a major conclusion of this experiment.Just can't resist another photo of our organic matter accumulation after three years of no-till in a productive agricultural field in Alabama. Here we have a full inch of organic matter, which accumulated in 3 years!

Remember, it takes about 500 years to build an inch of soil under natural circumstances, but here we can obtain food while simultaneously improving soil quality. I will definitely be showing this slide at my next conference!

5 comments:

Paddy said...

That is awesome, when one considers how long it takes nature to provide the composted soil. Teh application of that to poor soil will be potentially very productive.

whisperingpines said...

Sounds like you are onto something great! I love the photo of Emma!

Fiona said...

That is a great result Mike well done. Emma looks like shes enjoying the field trip too.

Andrew Judge said...

Good result. Plus, I always enjoy a good photo of organic matter.

The Dirt Dude said...

Ha! Andrew, you have so much organic matter where you are, you burn it! Literally. I always found that somewhat astounding... The rest of us should be so lucky...