Just a little reading

Having picked up a book called "The Ideal Soil" i thought i had cracked this cation exchange thing , oh how little i knew . I asked Neil (see earlier photos) for an explanation of Small tustins numbers , this is what he said ,it makes the most comprehensive sense about the subject since i started looking ino it.

Hi Mark
Must say, I have been working with soils for over 25 years and have yet to find anything close to ideal.However, while the ideal soil may not exist in reality, components of an ideal soil can be identified and management processes put in place to optimise them.However, soil characteristics will change with climate,weather, cultivation, application of fertilisers,lime, manures,cover crops,specific crop and root exudates etc,making the soil a very dynamic medium with constantly changing target or optimum values of any given nutrient or component. Striving for the ideal value of any given parameter can be a fruitless task,but interpreting how parameters interact, and how to optimise soil or crop response to these interactions,can provide useful guidance to soil management strategies.One such guide is the concept of Cation Exchange Capacity(CEC).
CEC is a measure of the negative charge associated with clay and organic matter,and
the ability for this charge to hold,adsorb or react with materials with a positive charge.The more active organic matter and functional clay,the higher the CEC,the better the nutrient and water holding capacity of the soil,and the higher the yield potential or performance characteristics of the soil.CEC is expressed in terms of unit charge, typically as milli equivalents per 100 gms (meq/100g) or centimols of cationic charge per kilo (cmolc/kg).This unit measure can be related directly to the atomic mass and charge of any given cation. A charge of one meq/100g would hold 449 kg per ha of Calcium, or 269 kg per ha of Magnesium, or 876 kg per ha of Potassium, or 516 kg per ha of Sodium or 22.4 kg per ha of Hydrogen (the unit measure of
acidity).Similarly, CEC can be converted into mg per litre to match standard soil testing. However, the numbers are derived using different extraction protocols and can not be used under Cross Compliance for soil management purposes.Anion Exchange Capacity, or AEC, is the measure of positive charge associated with clay and organic matter, and is expressed in the same unit terms (meq/100g or cmola/kg). AEC is typically very low and the anionic
(negatively charged) nutrients such as nitrate, sulphate, chloride and borate tend to have high diffusion rates,moving at over 1 cm per day though
the soil profile.Typical ranges for CEC would be 1 to 4 meq for sands, 2 to 8 meq for silts, 6 to 20 meq for clay loams, 15 to 45 meq for clays, 35 to 75 meq for organic soils and upto 225 meq for peats.CEC is a useful means of determining the ability of the soil to hold nutrients and can be used to measure both chemical concentration gradients
and actual nutrient loading.
Concentration gradients are readily calculated as Base Cation Saturation
Ratios, or BCSR, by dividing the unit charge of a particular nutrient by the
total charge of the soil. Each cation has different behavioural characteristics at specific concentration gradients, dependent on soil textural class and clay chemistry.Although optimum Calcium uptake can occur at 20% BCSR, for most soils,
Calcium works best at 60% to 68% BCSR. However, as Calcium has a positive impact on the physical spacing of the clay colloid, target BCSR values for Calcium must be adjusted to match clay type and content, in some cases increasing to over 80% BCSR before sustainable, self-structuring clay aggregates can be formed. By contrast, Magnesium activity may be optimum at around 4% BCSR, but must balance Potassium and Calcium if sufficient uptake levels are to be achieved. Conversely, Magnesium has a very high water holding capacity and has a tendency to decrease clay particle spacing, increasing the plasticine limits of the soil. Increasing the Magnesium BCSR
on a sand soil would reduce drought stress and Potassium uptake, while decreasing soil structure and increasing water holding on a clay soil (ideal for black grass).

For the example of Small Tustins, the values on the results sheet show;

element CEC as cmol/kg Base Cation Saturation Ratio Target
BCSR for this type of clay soil Nutrient load in kg/ha above or below
target
Calcium, Ca 23.40 meq, BCSR = 23.40/27.90 = 0.8387 or 83.8%
ideal for this soil 74 to 78% gives 1158 kg calcium excess
Magnesium, Mg 0.94 meq, BCSR = 0.94/27.90 = 0.0337 or 3.37% ideal
for this soil 5 to 7% gives 541 kg magnesium deficit
Potassium, K 0.45 meq, BCSR = 0.45/27.90 = 0.0161 or 1.6%
ideal for this soil 2.2 to 3.4% gives 154 kg potassium deficit
Total CEC 27.90

Interpretation is the key here. The Calcium excess is making a significantcontribution to soil structure, aeration, drainage, water infiltration ,
biological activity etc and it would be detrimental to reduce this to the target value. Although the Calcium excess is creating a concentration gradient against which Phosphorus, Magnesium and micro-nutrients will struggle, Calcium must be maintained at this level, or above, if soil structure is to improve to facilitate cultivation, grass weed control, Nitrogen assimilation and uptake etc. The down side is transient lock-up with Phosphorus, Manganese etc, all of which can be addressed using appropriate placement fertiliser, seed treatment, foliar feed, biolgicals
etc.Similarly, Magnesium base loading is low, but increasing the Magnesium level
to lowest BCSR target value would have major impact on soil structure, increasing plasticine limits and water holding which would restrict cultivation and favour grass weed seed development, while restricting Potassium uptake and Nitrogen Use Efficiency etc. making it far better, cheaper and agronomically more viable to foliar feed Magnesium to optimiseNitrogen and Potassium uptake.The BCSR values indicate chemical interactions. Target, or optimum levels, can be determined for optimum nutrient uptake and soil formation, but must be metered to suit specific soil type, cropping and environmental parameters.
As for Phosphorus - Potassium balance, one of the vital factors is crop nutrient demand. In the main, UK arable cropping focuses of autumn establishment, biasing P demand to the first 30 days from germination and leaving K to stem extension and beyond. This is not the case with most other parts of the world, where P and K demand are more closely timed. As a result, our crops need P at planting and K with first Nitrogen, while others can put total NPK in the seed bed and forget them for the rest of the growing season. In addition, most soils used to determine CEC and BCSR did not have the buffer capacity or strong alkaline nature of the typical
calcareous UK clay, and as a result are not subject to the massive P-fixing and antagonistic lock-up issues seen here, so P fertiliser strategies need to be modified to reflect this.Striving for ideal values may have agronomic benefits, but may also have cost implications that are prohibitive. For the example given, with 1158 kg Calcium excess, it would take 2400 kg Sulphur, in addition to the S required
by the growing crop or lost to the soil system by leaching etc, to effectively reduce the existing Calcium level to the ideal level. At £450 per tonne, this application would cost over £1000 per ha, which would not include the cost of loss of soil structure as the clay colloids begin to collapse, delays in drilling and crop establishment as soils take longer to dry and become friable, or the impact on grass weed seed germination, the activity of residual chemicals etc. As soon as this soil is subject to cultivation, the inputs of steel and diesel would trigger Calcium release from parent material, re-setting the Calcium BCSR at an excessive level. If
the farming system was reliant on direct drilling, cover cropping and surface mulching of crop residue, and if the reduction in Calcium from excessive to ideal had associated agronomic benefits, then the Sulphur route may have value. But under conventional management, with high input cost and volatile output prices that are often break-even at best, it may be far better to keep the Calcium level in excess, gain the benefit of improved soil structure, and work around the antagonistic nutrient interactions.Similar stories could be told for other cations. Building soil Magnesium to ideal would restrict Potassium uptake, lower Nitrogen Use Efficiency,
increase disease pressure, reduce soil structure and favour grass weeds.
Foliar feeding Magnesium will give improvements in Nitrogen use, protein building, disease suppression, green leaf area, without affecting soil structure. Building soil Potassium level would reduce Magnesium availability further, increase the tendency for the clay to shrink and crack, lift soil pH and reduce Zinc uptake. But timing an application of Potassium with Nitrogen at the onset of stem extension could lift grain yield potential in cereals by 400 to 600 kg/ha, provided the crop had access to sufficient Phosphorus and Manganese at germination.Its great to have targets. Even better to have the means to measure, monitor and manage those targets. But sometimes striving for ideals can be misleading, especially in the dynamics of the soil eco-system.
Hope this helps
N
This is what i asked

I have looked at the soil test we had done for small tustins and I can't fathom out the actual amount of calcium, magnesium , potash, sodium , that is available in the soil, I understand that if we take the exchange capacity which is 27.9 and multiply that by 400(?) it gives the actual amount required in the soil for calcium, 240 for mg,780 for K, and460 for NaThis book is in lbs acre is this the right calculation.
We then can take the amount in the soil and work out the amounts required the trouble is I can't fathom how to convert meq/100g into kg /ha and thus into the amount in the soil and then work out how much ca etc we need to apply.The NRM report , is, ca is 23.4 meq/100g,K of 0.45,mg of0.94,Na of 0.31
Does this make sense..?
The next question is the relationship between P&K ?
M

Drilling cover crop

I have at last made my mind up what to do next year , i originally had decided that the Trefoil would be my cover crop , but it has the nasty habit of being eaten by every thing that moves , be it Fleebeetle, slugs and now pigeons, at least they are not on the rape.

If the trefoil had looked like this thicker establishment i would have left it

but it was too thin.

Now i have decided to sow winter oats and then spray it off in spring and drill with spring wheat possibly Zircon

Drilling oats , please take no notice of tractor 8270R , it was the only one in yard.

New Season

Grain results

Having had grain sampled , here are the results
I now have the grain reults back

Moisture 14.9%
Bushel weight 73.1
Hagberg 219
Protein 10.03%
Admix 0.9%

Harvest is finally here !!

Ok quick post , its been sometime but harvest has arrived for Small Tustins ,
The yield ...........wait for it 2.23 tonnes per acre.We will discuss the finer points later but here are some photos of harvest.
We will be featured in a forthcoming edition of Crops magazine so if you are you new to this blog read down and see the earlier editions.

An inspection

Monday 12th July we had a visit from 3 esteemed gentlemen .From left to right , Roger, Neil and Nick.
Neil has put together the programme that we have followed this year , Roger is our regular agronomist and has along with Neil put up with numerous questions from myself.Some intelligent some perhaps not so , and Nick was along to have alook.
We came to several conclusions, these being
1 The wheat is remarkbly clean disease wise.
2It looks promising yield wise but we could have pushed it alittle bit harder with N as the trefoil and the |Twin N may have not worked so well .
3 The weeds wont` affect yield and if we have a major black grass problem in the future , this could help.

We discussed next years option and the plan at the moment is to try to establish a cover crop of oats and red clover this autumn , spray out the oats come spring and direct seed the wheat with some DAP .
We will then make a decision with regards to N . But i think we will give it some more.

Photos

Final application

Ok we have put the final application on, it consisted of 1.5 l/ha of sulphur and 2l/ha of the wonderfully titled kick-AZZ which is water soluble magnesiun fertilizer applied to maximise plant nutrient health and disease resistance it contains Phosphate 30% Potassium 8% magnesium 5% manganese 0.28% Zinc 0.28% and also another 30 lha of UAN giving approx 9kg/ha of N.
As you can see from the photos we have a fair crop , very clean disease wise ,big bold flag leaves sucking up all that energy , weeds are an issue and the trefoil does not seem to want to grow.we will do an ear count soon and this will give us some idea of potential yield and tillering etc.

Flag leaf application

Today we applied Activate MP, Hi-Mag, Sulphur, And Nitrogen at 30l/ha so as you have realised this is the same as before, the wheat is just breaking boot , is exceptionally clean , apart from weeds.We have controlled the wild oats and charlock i have some misgivings about the fools parsley though i think we may have given it aheadache but thats all. The Trefoil is what one could call bloody slow but is still hanging on.Over all i am pleased with it so far , pity about weeds, as you can see from Gladys the wheat is motoring on,

Update 2 applications

Ok we have decided that wehave to control the weeds , otherwise we will end up in a mess , this is one of the valuable lessons i have learnt, no matter how much you want it to work , weeds stuff it up ,control them and what you are attempting to achieve will become easier to the extent that in the future we hope to have less weed burden, So last week i sprayed the wild oats out with axial abd adigor and then yesterday iwent with the following
Activate MP at 1.5lt/ha which is A multi-mineral formulation containing magnesium phosphonate, essential amino acids,auxins, betaines, & a range of organic chelating agents.
Also Hi-mag at 1 lt/ha which is a unique nitrogen-free formulation containing Magnesium Sulphate,and also essential amino acids,auxins, betaines, & a range of organic chelating agents , and and we also added 1lt/ha of sulphur , we also added 30 l/ha of UAN giving approx 10kg/ha of N and then to see off the fools parsley etc we added some MCPB .
I`ll take soem photos soon.

The biological bit ,

Ok here we go , this morning my daughter and i mixed up the Twin N in its mixing jar , we then had to let it brew for 4 hours. What is Twin N i here you ask;
TwinN is a reliable, cost effective selection of high yielding nitrogen fixing microbes for use as a soil improver in all crops, leguminous and non-leguminous. TwinN operates by converting atmospheric nitrogen into a plant available form. In effect, TwinN microbes function like millions of tiny nitrogen fertiliser factories to provide nitrogen in a readily available form directly to the plant tissues and root zone. TwinN also improves yields by other mechanisms , wow you couldn`t make it up .
4 hours later i added it to the clean sprayer tank using clean non chlorinated water. we also added Biomex Sa from Omex which is
A liquid solution containing plant growth promoting rhizo bacteria. For use on a range of crops to enhance rooting, promote growth and phisically shield roots from pathogen invasion.
And Biomex SA which is:
A natural growth stimulant which results in improved crop germination and vigour leading to increased yield. Its use may also enhance tolerance to a range of soil borne diseases, including Fusarium sp., Pythium sp., Rhizoctonia sp. and Sclerotinia sp.
As you probably have gathered i have copied the techincal bit from various websites
I was told you need to apply to a cool damp target , it was raining, ideal .So we now wait and see i am expecting approx 6okg/ha N equivalent from the mix.

Plant tissue analysis

Heres a plant tissue analysis we had done last week

A confession

Ok we have had to reach for the spray can, as i explained earlier , this is not a organic trial and we need the trefoil to grow .So we have sprayed a 1/4 litre/ha of permasect to control the flea beatle that was giving it an absolute hammering. i know it goes against the basics but once we have a strong crop established then we will be in a postion to argue , and besides its my ball and i`ll play with it how i want to.Before we applied the permasect i did a bit of research and apparently a healthy crop shouldnt need a insecticide because insects are only drawn to crop thats under stress , which i understand , normally this is caused by high nitrate loading but why werent they attacking the fools parsley and charlock , theres more to this bio-logical agriculture then the odd soil test ,The next application f something should be the Twin N and all the other bits now thats a bit more bio friendly.The wheat is growing well, the charlock is in flower and i`m glad you can`t seethis field from a road , most of my friends whilst being interested still think its slightly daft.

Weeds love or loathe them

Another title , could be trefoil does it grow? , any way we went for a walk this afternoon , with the camera and here are the results , my big concern is the fools parsley , docks , and every other weed growing in the field , so now i have a dilemma, do i spray out the weeds , in the hope that the clover takes off more strongly or do i in the best tradition of organics leave it. My intial thought is this , its not an organic trial, so therfore i am tempted to knock out said weeds , however i am just alittle bit worried about soil life so perhaps abit more research is required . I have 2 people advising me on this project and until i check with them that i can use there names i will call them Roger and Neil .(have now checked) Anyway Roger our regular agronomist reckons i can spray the wheat and trefoil with MCPB , i will have to find out whether i can buffer its effects with something like fulvic acid to protect the soil, any thoughts .

Adding a little bit more

Put the second lot of nutrition on today it consisted of the following
2 l/ha of AM1009 which is A multi-mineral formulation containing 176g/l Potassium, 218g/l Phosphorus, 16.3g/l Manganese & 27.8 g/l Zinc essential amino acids, auxins, betaines, & a range of organic chelating agents.

And 2 lha of Microboost extra which is A Nitrogen-free multi-mineral formulation containing Manganese 78 g/l, Zinc 30.4 g/l, Copper 7.3 g/l, Sulphur 117.5 g/l and a trace of Boron.

And 25 l/ha of liquid UAN which is 28% Nitrogen giving approx 9kg/ha of N.

The trefoil is just beginning to take and looking good,the wheat is flying , we do however have some weeds coming this is where all my good intentions could go for a burton .

I will endeavour to put some photographs up tomorrow.

April 16th,afternoon

Well as the last posts show the crop of wheat has emerged the clover has been spread on ansd rolled in.
We now move onto the nutritional bit, the first application is; 4 litres/ha of rootboost and 1litre/ha of manganese.
This was applied 16/4/2010.

Rolling April 16th morning.

Rolling rolling rolling , etc... we spread the trefoil yesterday on to the loose seedbed created by the drill , well actually the the soil in between the drills is firm/moist with loose soil on top , so hopefully the seed will be pressed into the ground by the rolls and this will create an ideal situation for germination . Obviously with row spacing at 25cm there is plenty of room for clover between the rows and hopefully not be too shaded out later in the season.
I am also hoping the trefoil will be competitive with some weeds. (discuss)
Your tractor driver of the day is Paul who will later be the sprayer operator.
The wheat is looking well and what has suprised me is the number of worm castings in the seed rows , it seems they have taken the easy route and follwed the seed rows.

Clover sowing 15th April

Ok here we go with a little step outside the norm , we sowed Yellow Trefoil at 8kg/ha,using an old Nodet spreader fetched out from the back of the barn . It was suprisingly accurate , but a bit disconcerting working things out at ounces to the pint for calibration factors .
Hopefully the trefoil will give a little N this year but mostly its for year 2 , as i was explaining to father its not about being organic but trying something different , i originally said new but he said we did this back in the 50s, so nothings new is it.

Emergence

Well we have emergence , its been through for about a week now , but i have waited for now to take some photos.
Its looking good , i must admit i was a bit worried with regards to soil throw and burying seed too deep , but most is coming so fingers crossed, not exactly technical agronomy .
So we will wait for abit longer before we apply first dressing of root boost and manganese and also spreading on the clover but more about that in the future

Drilling 5th March

So here we go, early start , on the frost, cover crop sprayed off yesterday afternoon with 2 lha of glyphosate and sparkler.
Seed is Xi19 dressed with Redigo twin and Manganese , we wanted zinc but it wasnt available from supplier.Rate 170 kg/ha
Fertilizer is DAP,rate 55 kg/ha.
After a couple of trial runs it was decided to drill on frost as waiting for it to thaw just made the depth wheels clog up .
The soil conditions are perfect,the combination of frost mold and the oats have left a very friable tilth.
Depth is set at approx 25mm for seed and 90mm for fertilizer.
I was suprised at how well the ground travelled the only problem being penetration where the sprayer had run yesterday .
Many thanks to Vaderstad UK for the loan of the seed drill and PATurney for sorting it all out .
For the tractor fans its a NH7070 auto command.

Checked post drilling this afternoon , its amazing how much the soil has dried out,most of the oats have been cultivated out but i think as things settle we will see more still there .Glad we put the glyphos on, it will clear all itinerant black grass and weeds.

The joys of early morning drilling perfect

Early Feb with some local wild-life

Early February , oats have emerged , growing well, probably should have calibrated spreader a little better , some distinct stripes where they haven`t quite spread the full distance, good crop of oats , seems a shame to have to spray them out later, the root mass is something else, thick and bushy.

div>Spring beans in crop as well and these seem to be surviving quite a harsh winter , wouldn`t want to take them to harvest but all adds to the diversity,

I am suprised at how little black grass and polygnums have emerged .

9/10/09 Oats harrowed in using Vaderstad carrier