Watching from New Zealand

Occasionally tillage is required for very wet soils and heavily compacted soils and in sandy soil with low porosity. Delveing in sandy soils to can help with water retention by mixing clay in.

No till composted wood chips green (plant) and/or animal manure blend right over top of existing strata.

#SaveSoil

Sometimes I hear on your show the OM is free nutrients. To me, It is the sequestering of nutrients. I think of it as putting in a bank the dividend being the mineralization and loosing. If a farmer is building OM then the nutrients "essential elements" have to be added to the bank in some way from a source. I have fields that I have added 100 tons actual OM per acre by bringing in heavy feedlot manure that has 35% OM + 3% N 3% P2O5. Over 45 years with the OM only increasing 1-2% points OM and now is back to 2% in 3 million lbs of soil even in continuous corn NT yield of 230 to 290 each year. Our texture is very fine textured loess soil so it is very dense perhaps limiting the increase. We are on the 36th parallel and high altitude so we get lots of sunlight to heat the soil. I never thought of OM as giving free nutrients, perhaps it is because I got my degree in Soil Science back in the 1960's.

To build organic matter with cover crops, do you simply cut them down and plant over them or would you till them in in that case? I’m a home gardener that’s in an area with very sandy soil and need to work on building better soil.

so, a legume doesnt provide N for other plants until it is broken down by bacteria?

Mantab