Pasture Crop fall 2020

As described in our previous post, we are trying our first Pasture Crop as part of the CCTA-Farms Advancing Regenerative Management Systems project. Pasture cropping is simply planting an annual crop into existing pasture. The pasture is made up of primarily warm season perennial grasses that grow back every year, we don’t need to do anything and the grass just comes back.

So why would we try to add an annual crop, that we must plant with a tractor and planter into this same ground? Since warm season pasture grass goes dormant from November to May, this creates a window of opportunity for a crop of annual cool season grass. The cool season grasses will be capturing sunlight, and CO2 while pumping sugars (carbon) from photosynthesis into the soil while the warm season grasses take a break.

In the photo above, the warm season pasture grass is turning brown and going dormant while the newly seeded cool season annual pasture crop is actively growing. The pasture crop is utilizing free solar energy and putting that energy into the soil as carbon that we would not normally be capturing this time of year.

Herd prepares pasture for cropping

We grazed the herd this past summer at various levels of intensity across the pasture where we seeded annual grasses. In addition, we mowed a small portion of the pasture for the chicken coops to more easily move through. Below are photos showing different levels of grazing in the pasture and what we found for the new pasture crop. The left side of the photo is a view of the grazed pasture and the right side of the photo is a ground level close up of the new seedlings (photos taken September 18th, 13 days following planting).

Seeding information

The pasture crop seed mix obtained from Green Cover Seed, Bladen Nebraska:

• 73% Winter Triticale
• 10% Winter Peas
• 6% Annual Ryegrass
• 5% Hairy Vetch
• 3% White Clover
• 3% Red Clover

Planting date September 5th. Our fields were dry at planting and a few days after seeding we received a 2 inch rain (prayers are answered). Since then, we have had very little precipitation but have experienced dewy mornings and last week, 2 inches of snow.

The various seeding rates tried: ~55, ~60, ~70 and ~80 lbs. of seed per acre. Next spring we will clip and weigh final pasture crop growth to see if there was differences in total grass grown versus seeding rates.

What has nature accomplished so far?

Below are some seedlings we dug up over the past two months and gently washed the soil off the roots. The first photo below gives an excellent comparison of an annual grass plant root system versus a perennial grass plant roots.

How much root impact is that?

Currently our soil moisture condition is ok. We did have snow and cold last week but the 10 day forecast includes multiple days of sun with temperatures in the 60 to 70 degree range. The pasture crop will easily provide 2+ months of extra solar energy capture and carbon inputs into our pasture soils this fall.

If we just consider the winter triticale, seeded at an average rate of 67.5 lbs. per acre… that comes to 1,080,000 (yes that would be 1 million +) plants per acre. Each of these plants dribbling photosynthesis sugar into the soil microbiome through their roots while our native warm season plants go dormant. Granted, all of those seeds probably did not germinate, but that still sounds like a lot of additional soil ecosystem food already released this fall. And remember, these cool season plants should have a longer growing season yet to come next spring! On top of that, when was the last time the microbes living in our pasture soils had the opportunity to gorge themselves on winter triticale sugars? I would venture the guess of never. So we have added new root systems (habitat) and root exudates (food) that should diversify our soil microbe population or at least make the existing population healthier and happier. We like to see happy cows and happy microbes in our pastures.

From skeptical to optimistic

You can read why we were skeptical in the blog post prior to this one concerning this pasture cropping test. We still may be a little skeptical. But based on the results we have seen so far, things are definitely looking up! Stay tuned for future updates and we will leave you with a few final photos of the 2020 fall pasture crop.