Best Crop to Build Up Soil

Fergienewbee

Well-known Member
The last couple of years, I have planted a crimson and medium red clover, Austrian winter pea, and wheat mix in some food plots. Vetch volunteers to add to the mix. I plowed one plot down this spring and planted corn. The way it's growing, even without much rain, tells me the mix really helped.

Much of my soil is light and sandy and depleted from years of neglect. I get a good crop of spotted knapweed which I plan to treat with Milestone or another herbicice that will kill it. Over all, organic matter, nitrogen, etc. what is the best soil imporovement crop? I've planted rye in the knapweed area but it doesn't crowd it out. Vetch usually climbs the rye stems.

These are all realatively small areas, most less than a half acre.

Larry
 
My dad always sowed soybeans, then plowed them under while green to build the soil. It added a lot of plant material and nitrogen.
 
The soils professor at college my first year used to always preach the virtues of red and/ or white clover plus one native grass. Some use rye. I am rehabbing about 9 acres right now with the clover/ grass program. Had to learn the hard way that ammonia (during the 1960's and 1970's) is hard on the soil here and wished viable no-till had come about two decades earlier. The fool that took over the neighbor's ground is on the fast track to ruining that by working it wet plus ammonia. The people that own the ground only care about money so it will be a matter of the tenant running out of money and I doubt the next guy will be offering the big pay days.
 
I plant cowpeas a lot. They stand up to grazing better than soybeans. I usually follow those with corn or grain sorghum. I'm going to leave my corn standing and in the fall rototill and plant Austrian winter peas with a push garden seeder. The stalks will make a strong anchor for the pea vines to climb next spring and make good brood cover.

Larry
 
Put a crop of hogs on it for a couple years. All your stumps will gone and the soil richer than it ever has been.

We had six acres of waste land that was trash with plumb brush, weeds and small brush. We rotated three groups of 30 sows on it for 3 years - they left it looking like moonscape. Dropped the plow as deep as it would go then sowed it to alfalfa. First year we got 3 cuttings off it and could have had 4 if we could have kept up with it.
 
yellow or white sweet clover will grow where topsoil has been washed away. It is blooming on road cuts this time of year. In addition to building the soil it will fix 100 # nitrogen in the soil in a growing season.
 
The vetch is a legume like the clover is. Rye is just about useless for building soil. It will recover nitrogen (think of heavy manure spreading) and provide organic matter but it is shallow rooted plant. Clover or vetch will do that but also build up nitrogen. Plus they are a deeper rooted plant and will build the soil deeper.

So if you want to build the ground back up it needs the PH to be corrected. Then plant a mixture that is heavy with legumes and just a few grasses. The grass will hold soil but does not build the ground back up very fast.
 
Sweet clover. Plant it with oat - or other small grain - in the spring, let it grow until the following June or so - 14-16 months - and it will have produced a lot of organic matter as well as N when you plow it down. A lot.

You'll need to get your P & K frpom somewhere - manure is great, commercial fertilizer, etc.

'Tillage radishes' have become a popular topic in mainstream agriculture. They root down deep, and pull up some N,P,K from down deep and put it on the soil top when they rot down. They also like to wedge in and loosen up the soil a bit, like deep tillage would do. However, you need some N,P,K in your deeper sol for them to find, if the soil is worn out likely not much they can do.

--->Paul
 
Having ready access to seeds locally helps. Local Coop stocks black eyed peas. Had a neighbor plant em and plow em etc. etc. One year, after about 5 years of that, Houston Black Clay soil, he planted a crop and from the time he spring planted till he harvested the crop not one drop of rain fell on the field. Crop was about half the size of normal, but it did make a crop. Soil condition? Don't know what else it could be.

HTH,
Mark
 
We planted peas and oats or barley and combined for feed. Innoculate the pea seed to fix nitrogen on the pea plants roots. Cover crops do several things, add nitrogen, build soil tilth, prevents erosion and keeps the soil from packing....James
 
Ditto. I have had good luck with this. Comes in quick and crowds out weeds. If you don't let it go to far past flowering you can get a few crops per year as well. Any time I open up a new area for my garden I palnt 3 crops of buckwheat and as soon as the flowers start to look a bit weak turn it under, wait a few days, plant again. I also do winter rye on the whole garden.
 
Sweet Clover may be the best, soybeans will losen the soil. Any legume is good. I plowed down a crop of lespidiza once so thick you could hardly walk through it and about waist high. I took a lot of Alfafa off that field for the next few years.
 
I also plant the rye at the end of the season. I have a hard time finding buckwheat here in MD.
Hal
 

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