Once you understand what type of soil you have on your land then you can begin to work on improving soil quality with cover crops. You can check out my previous two posts to get the basics of understanding your soil if you need a refresher on how to get soil quality information. This week I listened to the Future of Agriculture podcast interview with Russ Conser, the CEO of Blue Nest Beef, in which they extensively discussed Regenerative Agriculture. You can find that podcast here. I highly recommend that you listen to it if you have the time but it basically summarizes some of the history of the regenerative agriculture movement. Mr. Conser has an empirical and scientific approach, evidenced based perhaps, of how brining carbon back into the soil is beneficial and how it can be measured. This is the latest in research that I have been doing over the last several months on how to use cover crops rotations to improve my soil quality and feed my goats.
I started with reading almost all of the materials I could find on the Green Cover Seed website after receiving my order of Sunn Hemp and Peas and Oats cover crop in the fall. I followed that by reading two books, Dirt and Growing a Revolution by David R. Montgomery and then spending a ton of time reading academic articles on the University of Florida’s online library.
I have learned 3 things doing research. This will be the topic of the next couple of posts.
- Its important to research cover crop mixes. It is also important to rotate your cover crops
- Cover Crops can improve your soils but its more important to keep your soils covered. Having the right cover crop is like a bonus
- Adding livestock is essential to improve your soil faster.
Improving soil quality is my goal and I firmly believe it should be the goal of every farmer. Below is a picture of the second cover crop try out that i have done in my farm. Its a mixture of Sunn Hemp and a Peas/Oats mix. That picture was taken last month, as you can see Sunn Hemp grows fast. More to follow on the next post.
