How does a guy build soil?

Ultradog MN

Well-known Member
Location
Twin Cities
I have an old gravel pit up at my land.
It's not gravel per se but a heavy claey, rocky dirt that they mined for fill dirt when they built the new highway 40 years ago. It's about 4 acres.
Not much grows in it - some grasses but that is kind of sparse - though there is enough vegetation that I brush hog it every year in late July to stimulate new growth.
I wish I could get better plant growth in there.
A friend of mine suggested all the leaves in the fall but it would take many truckloads of leaves.
What else can I do to stimulate more vegetation?
There's no farms around anymore to get manure from and I wouldn't have the equipment to spread it if there was.
What kind of fertilizer could I use to stimulate plant growth?
Would using chemical fertilizer eventually build soil if a crop like rye was never harvested?
I'm not just looking ahead to next summer but would also like to do some sort of long term reclamation in that area.
What can a guy can do without a huge budget?
Thanks for any advice.
 
Well, It will not be easy, but for best results you need to add lots and lots of organic matter. Fertilizer will not do much until the organic matter has amended the soil to allow water to percolate and oxygen get to the plant roots. That means that you will need to till the organic matter in somehow.

Good luck, Larry
 
Your ground needs organic matter as much as fertilizer. The best way is manure but you say there is none around.

1) Check your soil PH. Many times poor soils is acidic. Needing lime.

2) Is the ground flat enough to plow without erosion??? IF it is then plant a cover crop with commercial fertilizer to get it to grow. When it is pretty tall plow it under. Then seed again and repeat.

I had a spot that was maybe 2-3 acres that was poor. I did the cover crop and plow method for two year straight. I plowed it four times. The last time I ran soil tests and limed an fertilized it. I seeded it to grass/clover. I let it grow for hay for a few years. I then left the hay one spring and plowed it under. I planted late corn on it. I then disk the stalks down.

The ground there is still not top ground but it will produce 7-80% of the better ground. I now hit it with manure with a lot of bedding in it. That had helped it too.

How far north are you in MN. There should be someone that has hog manure around you that you could buy. Around here they are some times looking for ground to spread on.
 
gypsum and covercrops. greencoverseed.com can help you out on a mix. just get a budget in mind and figure out if you want an annual or perennial.
sweet clover is something that comes to mind but it's best to have a variety of plant types in the mix.
 
When corn in our area was picked and cribbed when grinding it for feed it was shelled at the feed mill with corn cobs piled out back. My grandfather had a field that he said the clay stuck up out of the ground. He put it corn after corn for several covering the stocks with corn cobs he hauled in by the wagon load. He also covered the cobs and stocks with bedding cow manure from winter before plowing it under deep. We farmed it 50 years ago after he was gone and it produced quite well. I am not sure how many years he worked at bringing up the soil but it was not a quick deal.
 
Fence it. Buy a half dozen calves and feed them there. It will take 20 years, but after ground gets raped, that is what happens.
 
Start with a soil test, and determine ph, organic matter, P, K etc.

As others have said, increasing organic matter is important. SOme would suggest "cover crop", but crops that produce a lot of organic matter are best- such as clover, alfalfa, and even corn. If it were a multiple year deal, clover or alfalfa would probably be best... and harvesting only a little, or none.

And forget the plowing it under part. No-till will help regain organic matter faster than with any tillage, which only helps eliminate organic matter. It will also allow soil microorganisms and worms to flourish. Tillage only kills this part.

Most of the good of a cover crop is the root system... we think of what's on top as the important part, but it's what going on under ground that counts.

An example: in 2012, we began renting a really beaten down piece of ground... ph low, fertility low, organic matter around 2.0, some below.

Fall 2014, after 3 years of no-till, corn wheat and beans, and a red clover cover, and some cow manure, OM is now at 2.7-2.8.

Not bad for 3 seasons with a big drought in there.
 
I'm wondering about saw dust or even wood chips. Have you got a sawmill around that you could get some from? Maybe moldboard them under and then use a cover crop to get some organic matter in the top couple inches. Just thinking out-loud.
 
No manure.............hmmm...........anyone in the local area pump septic tanks? I would make a deal with him perhaps..or municipality's that collect leaves? Maybe they need a place to dump? Thats what I would be looking into.
 
Tree services give away wood chips to anyone that will take them around here. Not the best soil amendment, but much better than nothing. I spread some on part of my lawn that is too shady for grass and planted azaleas. In a short while there were tons of earthworms under the mulch. What I am getting has quite a bit of leaves mixed in, and breaks down quicker than you would think when in ground contact.
 
With an area of that size, I would talk to some landscape people. They often are looking for a place to dump grass cuttings and leaves.
I have two companies here that I let dump.
I push it into piles and let it compost.
 
You need organic matter.

Chemical fertilizers supply the minerals and nutrients.

So, manure is a big help.

Leaves and wood chips might take long time to break down, but would help.

Then plant alfalfa, or other deeply rooted crop. They go down and make a fat root so your ground gets OM deeper, as well as pulling up into rents from down low. Likely have to add commercial fertilizers to feed the alfalfa.

Other cover crops like tillage radish, turnips, and some grasses that grow a big deep root system, if you don't want alfalfa.

Typically small grains do better than longer season row crops, in such soils.

Anyhow, manure is best.

Leaves and other compost stuff is next best.

Growing a 'crop' that puts don deep roots will help.

Another thing is fence it, and feed some cattle or other grazing critters, put the round hay bales here and there, they will place the manure themselves, and the wasted hay will help build the soil. This is a lot of work likely not for you, but it would be a way.

Paul
 
Ultradog: As for what you can buy that will help. Gypsum will help with the soil structure. Plus the type we get from out at Fort Dodge, Iowa has a fair amount of sulfur in it. This is NOT dry wall gypsum. That has been processed and does NOT work for building ground. It actually binds the nutrients in the soil.

The bulk gypsum is around $100 a ton here. 500 pound to the acres is good shot. So it is not too bad in price.

You really need to have a soil test done. That will give you a base line on where your at and where you need to go.

I disagree with coonie minnie on notil in this type of soil. The cover crops will not even grow in this tight type of soils until you get some nutrients incorporated into the soil. In more of a loam soil the notil he talks about will work.

I have seen notil tried in the type of soil your talking about. The PH is in levels in the ground. The tow few inches will have nutrients in it but under that there is not much movement. notil depends on the root system of a plant to move the nutrients down into the root zone as they decay. When you do not have root down then it does not work.

I have done this type of rebuild on several different type of ground. Two of these where old railroad beds and the others where old road beds. I actually DEEP ripped them first and then disk in lime, fertilizer and manure. Sowed a cover crop and then plowed them under. By plowing I was able to mix the nutrients into the top 6-8 inches of the soil. After doing this a few times then the plants started to go deeper into the soil. Then something like the turnips or radishes for a cover would work.

I do not think you have the equipment to deep rip that is way I said to moldboard it.

I no tilled for ten straight years, 100%. My yields never where what they should have been. Especially in the more tight clay soils. I went back to a reduced tillage and some notil an my yields JUMPED up in the FIRST year. I have found you need pretty good ground to make pure notil work with corn.
 
If it ain't built a top soil in 40 years of dead vegetation rotting on the top of the ground it ain't gona do it now without you hauling in tons of material to plow into the clay to break it up.

I'm trying to picture how this was mined. Must be they cut into or removed a hill.
Around here mined dirt for a highway would leave what we call a interstate pond.

But if it is built in such a way as you could dam up the open end you could build a pond.
Lots of money in catfish but then again your area is probably to cold for catfish farming.

08521.jpg
 
I too have a 10 acre gravel pit. Two lakes. One lake during the dry season dries up leaving about 4 inches of muck, mud.

The boss wants to start flowers in pit. So I harvest muck with loader and dump trailer and pile it up where she wants.

Tree trimmers working for power company has left us about 20 loads of wood chips/leafs.

My neighbor has 3 horses. Once a year I loan him my backhoe and he delivers me 8 14k dump trailer loads of horse poo, hay, sawdust, wood chips mixed with lime mixed in.

By mixing the muck and horse poo I have piles of good dirt in the gravel pit. I cover the piles with 3 inches of wood chips to keep moisture in and weeds down. The boss has started what she calls "The Garden of Eden." When she thins out her flowers beds they get planted in the pit. We have many hills, go-cart, kawasaki mule trails, and a target ranger. It will be a life time project, but it's looking better each year.

I don't own a brush hog. Instead I use finish mover. Keep the ground level and slowly remove asian honeysuckle with the backhoe. No need for brush hog.

I did discover that asain honeysuckle does provide nice shade to transplant goood trees in the summer. I've started walnut and holly trees this summer in the shade. They lived. Plan to remove the honeysuckle around the good trees in a year to two after trees have adjusted.
george
 
I would tear it up as deep as you can, not necessarily plow. Add anything you can, also some fertilizer and plant tillage radish and rye, bush hog down and work that in. Plant to good pasture in the fall, inoculate the legumes and pasture it. Spread manure with a drag harrow....James
 
I'm glad I asked this here.
A lot of good information.
I guess my friend was on the right track with the leaves as it would add organic matter.
I did think about buying some round hay bales I saw that were sitting out for about 3 years. Bust them up a bit and grind them up with the bush hog.
I wonder what you'd have to pay for those.
The pit was carved out of rolling glacial hills and mounds.
A civil engineer told me once that they probably mined about 1/2+ million yards out of it.
Probably can't do much deep tillage as there are a lot of boulders - some of them 5 foot+ in diameter.
Below is a photo that shows the floor of the pit and the cliff where they mined it out to the property line. Cliff on that side is about 30' high and varies around the pit from about 15' to the 30' you see. But it does drain on one end so no way to put in a pond.
They must have piled up some black dirt in about a half acre area as it is good black soil there and I have a deer plot there. The green you see is turnip.
I will look into other sources of leaves, grass clippings, even wood chips too.
I will also get a soil sample and send it to the Univ of Minn and see what they say it needs.
This is a long term project for sure.
Thanks to all for your advice.

P1010001-4.jpg
 
two different places have contacted garbage outfits. compost is baged in paper picked up seperate from garbage.both outfits had comp. piled about six feet deep over the hole area they wanted covered,left it rot down for a few years. the bags rot with the rest. after it has roted well they bulldosed it and planed. the one place will plant next year, the other planted this yr. it had a great crop of sunflowers. just anouther idea. wally
 
It takes nature about a 100 years to buiId 1 inch of topsoiI.
Them pit diggers shouId have dozed the topsoiI off and redistribute it after the project was done.
To try to make that ground productive wiII prob cost 5 times as much as it ever wiII return,... IMO.. not worth it.
 
You would be surprised how many people have old hay they want hauled off. It rots down to a nice compost, especially if you can get any good fresh manure to add in. Sounds like an interesting challenge to me.
 
clover.
I have a couple acre area like that. Clay, all the topsoil removed. It was like a concrete parking lot.
I removed a hedgerow on the prevailing wind side, so it would see
my big winds always.
Wild seed blown in, I watched what eventually tried to grow...sparsely.
Some who knows what it is weeds...and wild clover.
So I seeded it with clover whenever it was wet for a few years.
(seeding consisting of walking around the couple acres throwing seed around whenever I remembered to buy a bag)
Clover got established. mowed it when it got tall.
Clover improved the soil and now grass is out there too.
Grass finally got going good and is now muscling the clover.(never used any grass seed, wind brought it in)
When it was really barren, I used to drag an old horse drawn spike tooth harrow around to scratch it so the water and wild seed could get in..and not just run over the top.
Other than that...didn't add or do anything. That clover is tough stuff.

Opinion, I like a mowed clover field/lawn. Some don't like clover in the grass. your call

Edit: Like to add that I'm not a farmer. Didn't know at the time that clover puts nitrogen back in. (I do now from this and other sites.)
I just watched what mother nature was trying to do and then just added to it.
 
You should be able to get old bales like that for $10 a piece or less...including having them loaded onto your trailer... sometimes even free if you do the loading and hauling.
 
68 day sweet corn, and a flail mower.

Sell the sweet corn to a wholesaler who will come daily to pick it, on a lump sum payment, based on their expectation of what they could glean.

When stalks are still green and full of nitrates, chop them up good, 1 pass with a disk to incorporate, then plant rye and tillage radishes over winter.

wash rinse repeat. I will dig out the photo I have of my wheat field after 2 years of the above program. There is a line where the sweet corn field stopped that you can see, and the yield was 25 bushel per acre heavier on the sweet corn side of the line.
 
Check with your municipal garbage/trash hauler. Near here is a land fill that takes all yard trash, tree limbs, grass clipping and some pretty good sized trees cut up. The run it all thru a tub grinder and stack it in compost piles. Not sure now but you were able to get all a pickup could hold for under $10.00 Big trucks and I am talking about 15 or so yard dumps and some big trailer dumps were also loaded from there for a small fee. I was told the fees were to cover equipment cost to load. It was good compost and kept many ton's of material from the land fill. Some people would spread it about an inch deep on their lawns and you could really see any areas that were missed. I would check out local land fills if it were me.
Angle Iron
 
My dad had a very red clay spot years ago where the topsoil had been robbed. We hauled loads of cinders from an old mill that burned coal and he put all the leaves he could find on it. Within a couple of years, he had a great garden spot. The cinders made the difference. Changed the texture of the soil.
Richard in NW SC
 
I agree with all the above. We have the same problem with old salt water kills from the oil back in the 50 and 60's. Has to drain first. Then we just haul whatever can get. Old hay bales are the easiest. Don't think God had a plow or disk when he was making topsoil! Just let the hay etc rot and eventually topsoil will appear. Has to get really dry now to find the salt kill. Vic
 
There was about an acre like you describe on a place I used to rent,I stored round hay bales there for 5 years in a row after that it was the best land on the place.Old hay will build land up quickly.Also a product called Planters II and kelp will mineralize the soil and get some vegetation going.
 
Duke Power is look'n for a place to dump 20 million tons of coal ash
I offered them my 20 acres for 20 mil but I have not heard back from'em...

They seam to have another place in mind just down the road from me :( I hate to be the looser on this deal and you are one of my buds if you are interested I will send them you way....
 

I agree with everyone that says organic matter. I agree with George about horse manure. I have never applied horse manure for fertilizer but for tilth, or organic matter it is very good for building up sand or clay. Horse manure is also difficult to get rid of and often people that are in suburban settings have to pay to get it hauled off. You could be a receiver, and charge them a discount for dumping.
 
Like others have said try to spread some old hay of any kind on this area to restore some organic matter in the soil. Manure is the best soil amendment for your project and chicken litter manure is the best manure. Here we can buy composted chicken manure from nearby farmers. If you can afford it apply 4-500 lbs/acre of fertilizer, like a 12-12-12 analysis. Plant something in the legume family like yellow blossom sweet clover to produce nitrogen in the soil or some other clover that grows well in your area. Maybe try some sericea or common lespedeza. These almost grow anywhere. Or forage radish. Also add a bit of grass in the mix like ryegrass. Be very careful with wood chips and saw dust , they can mess up the carbon:nitrogen ratio in the soil. Your best bet is chicken litter to start and plenty of it. If something starts growing I wouldn't do any tillage for a year or two let the soil build itself. We don't know your soil pH unless it is tested, then go from that report.
 

Bison is right about the topsoil. If you start building now with manure or anything organic you are on the right track but even if organic matter is plowed under every year our great grandkids won't see that soil returned back to where was before it was dug up.
 
Before you start making changes, you need to know EXACTLY what you have going in....

Start by addressing drainage issues if any. Wet areas will usually be high in salt concentration. That alone will destroy any efforts you make going forward.

THEN get full soil testing. From there, work to get ph as close as can be to 6.8 to 7.0

Deep rip or chisel plow next if compaction is an issue.

THEN start to build organic matter. Remember, tillage breaks down organic matter. Minimal tillage once you start to improve the soil will help over long haul. Follow that with fertilizers, etc.

Realize this ground didn't just get that way over night. It may take years to get it to good condition.

All the advice listed so far MAY help, in SOME conditions. You have to know EXACTLY what you have before you get specific with future actions. (ie, it's tough to get where you're going if you don't know where you're at)
 
I disagree with that my garden is located on top of a hill where a power line goes thru 10 years ago it was a hard packed eroded clay piece of land that wouldn't hardly grow any weed.I subsoiled it at first then started chisel plowing a couple years later.I put on manure,old hay,leaves,gypsum,lime,kelp,Planters II,granite dust, mineralized the soil and grew cover crops.After about 5 years it became a very fertile piece of ground with loose soil and now have over a foot of topsoil that grows great vegetables.Soil can be built up quickly if you want to put the organic matter and minerals to it plus deep chisel to keep it loose and make it absorb water.All it takes is time,$$$ and work.
 
Stout fence around the plot, small shed and water tank- then during summer feed sheep or hogs and come winter the critters go to locker. 4 acres in north is 4 piggies to the acre during growing season. weed, feed and plowing service provided with pork chops and bacon at end of season. Give pigs some corn and mixed hay every other day or a simple feeder fill once a week. Leaf piles are piggy playground, old hay bale half rotted will be torn and spread and leftover bakery goods will be recycled into bacon. Next year a deep plow of some of ground , oats nurse crop to Russian Red or White Dutch clover and after sprouting with mixed weeds a couple to 6 spring lambs weaned or couple ewes with lambs at side- same shed as used for the pigs, same water tank. Use Dorpers or Shetland, Jacobs sheep, feed some hay and have roast lamb at end of year along with sheepskin vests. next year leave the ground alone until mid season, see what comes up- then maybe a couple calves for rough control or Boer Goat for brush control. Organic matter, labor and time needed- time and labor can be reduced some by use of critters. Ever see a garden planted behind a barn in what was a dirt feed lot area? RN
 

What Ultradog is working with is soil that was way below the surface for eons before it was exposed to the light of day and doesn't have a wisp of humous, and nutrients. I have a drainage ditch going through the farm that was dug in 1917. The dug up soil from way below was just piled on the banks of the ditch and eventually was leveled off and farmed. Very little grows on that soil even though it was been fertilized and even manured. The goodie in top soil has develop over thousands of years. It isn't just organic matter alone. The soil needs organic matter first to feed the bacteria that breaks it down and turns it into humous. Bacteria needs oxygen and deep rooted plants create the holes in the soil to carry oxygen down there. When the roots decay more organic matter is added along with nitrogen, and the holes where the roots were are the pathway for water and oxygen.

18 years ago I turned my drainage ditch banks into CRP filter strips. Maybe years of brome grass roots will help it out. I wish I would have planted switchgrass in there because it has a deeper root but it's too late now.
 
The soil in my garden was about the same as his to start with the topsoil was washed away years ago and continued to erode.Any soil can be improved with the right treatment.As with yours a little bit of fertilizer and a little manure won't cut it.Cover it in 2 ft of hay and 6 inches of manure every year for a few years plus add needed minerals it'll improve.Not cheap to do though.
 
Chemical fertilizer will stimulate plant growth, which then in turn would contribute to building soil, but chem fertilizer alone will not build soil. Manure, thick, box-stall type cow manure with lots of hay and straw mixed in with it is the fastest way I know of to build soil. It will help re-invigorate microbes and worms. Once your soil life is re-established, feed it with vegetation and more manure.
 

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