Nitrogen in snow!!!

wilson ind · Feb 20, 2012

Talking with son who farms in Ill about old days when farmers plowed all the smow under with mowbord plow. He wondered if I had slipped a cog in my engine room (head), Any of you fellows ever hears of this????

Ron in NS · Feb 20, 2012

First and last snows were always called "poor man's fertilizer" around here.

RayP(MI) · Feb 20, 2012

Yes, there"s probably some nitrogen in snow. Probably very little, in terms of what you need for fertilizer. Besides, frozen ground is mighty tough to plow!

Fordfarmer · Feb 20, 2012

Never heard of plowing snow under (ground is usually frozen much too hard for that here), but my Grandpa always used to say that the best thing for oats was a blanket of snow.

JDseller · Feb 20, 2012

They always tried to do that around here too. Like others have posted they called it "poor man's fertilizer". Don't know why they said that. They would start plowing just as soon as the frost was thin enough to plow through.

Tony in Mass. · Feb 20, 2012

There's lots of nitrogen in the yellow snow....

Sean Feeney · Feb 20, 2012

www.butternutvalleyfarm.com/274/poor-mans-fertilizer

DeltaRed · Feb 20, 2012

Many years ago,one spring,I had a field about 1/2 or so plowed.Came a nice snowstorm one night.Before it melted and turned to mud,I plowed for a while....Later,you could see right to the row where the snow was plowed in.

buickanddeere · Feb 20, 2012

Deeper moisture or extra soil fracture from frost?
After V-ripping the fields the next year. A row of greener and taller crop identified every strip ripped.

Aaron SEIA · Feb 20, 2012

I'm reaching back a ways, but...when I was getting my agronomy degree at Iowa State I was taught that all rain/snowfall added something like 5lbs/year of N. Certainly nothing to go buy a plow for, but better than nothing, I guess.
AaronSEIA

Ken Macfarlane · Feb 20, 2012

Yup, no nitrogen in snow. Less than air actually!

flying belgian · Feb 20, 2012

Old timers around here used to say plowing snow under makes for sour ground. They never said if that was a good thing or a bad thing. How in the world can you plow frozen ground?

tjdub · Feb 20, 2012

> Yup, no nitrogen in snow. Less than air actually!

There's quite a bit of Nitrogen in air though (about 80%). Perhaps the benefit of turning that snow in is more about burying the air the snow contains than about the water.

Brian Dan · Feb 20, 2012

Back in the day when my dad was farming 1968. My dad rented on shares with a neighbor. The old neighbor world not let my dad in the late fall plow down snow. He claimed that all you would get next year was weeds. The real old timers had all kinds of ideas that made no sense.
Brian

Paul Searl · Feb 20, 2012

yep, I have read about them doing that a few times before in journals and stories. Most people don't beleive me either. Seemed to be a fairly commonplace thing though, and really, at the time, most farmers were pretty poor. I figure that the first snow probably came down really before the ground got frozen. microbial activity can take place still at fairly low temps in soil so a little nitrogen shot would also probably help there.

Since the industrial revolution, nitrogen in snow/rainfall has supposedly gone way up, most of IL, Indiana Iowa and parts of surrounding states received over 7kg/hectare in 1998 according to this
http://nadp.sws.uiuc.edu/lib/brochures/nitrogen.pdf

Still not a significant amount, but considering the lack of commercial fertilizers of the day, any little bit probably helped.

Dave in GA · Feb 20, 2012

I think I'll buy some air concentrate and plow it into the soil.

LJD · Feb 20, 2012

When I was living in northern Vermont in the early 70s, I knew a few farmers that did it. Snow was called "poor man's manure."

Stuart · Feb 20, 2012

Are you talking about Ripping in the spring?

caterpillar guy · Feb 20, 2012

I have had oats with no snow go about 40-50 bpa. Then have oats that got snowed on go 80-100bpa so since they were in different years I can't say with certainty about snow but sure seems like there is something there.

keh · Feb 20, 2012

That was the story here in SC also. Of course, it dosen't snow often enough to put it to the test, and anyway when it does snow the ground is too wet to plow with our soil.

KEH

greygoat · Feb 21, 2012

Back in the 1950's, the "Old Timers" talked of it

Philip Doolittle · Feb 21, 2012

Many thanks for Paul Searl's LINK for info on Nitrogen in the air. This helps my underststanding why I use rain water in my garden. Phil

NEBeef · Feb 21, 2012

I've read of dust bowl era farmers doing it to trap the moisture under ground before it could evaporate. Never heard of the nitrogen angle...

Nitrogen in snow!!!

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