No, I'm not full of it at all, the fact that you thought you'd throw in a couple of additions to your initial scenario, doesn't negate or refute one single word I said about ploughing.vtsnowedin wrote:peaceful_life wrote:
No, what you're doing is either accepting received wisdom, without question, or.. wittignly ploughing on regardless, simply for the sake of the dollar.
When you plough, you're doing it because the plant you're growing is a commodified annual, unless you eat a lot of oats(?), either way...it's still a uniformed monoculture, I'll repeat that, a UNIFORMED MONOCULTURE and if nature abhors anything, it's the vacuum of a monoculture, hence why they do not naturally occur, in fact, if you think about it, they are the very antithesis of the evolutionary process, so...you're already on the road in attempting to defy the universal laws and make no mistake that when you plough, you are releasing carbon and you're ripping up ripping up root structures, albeit your shallow uniformed ones, which help in hydrological retention, along with the myriad (1% currently known to science) community of life-forms and the gasses from them, good earth is 50% soil 50% space /water capacity and a web of plasmic streaming, which you've just obliterated with the plough...and compacted with the tractor, giving you a double carbon release.
You'll also find (don't try and bullshit) that weeds will follow the compaction trails to redress them back to the optimum, therefore...I don't believe you don't spray, to maintain uniformity and if you do...it goes right the way in to the hydrological system, which doesn't recognise 300 yards, equate that: 1mm of rainfall/water over 1 square meter=1 litre, that's a lot of kinetic volume to shift debris and toxins.
You're full of it.
For one thing it is not a monoculture. Despite the fact that what you can see in the pictures is just the oats it was also seeded with clovers , turnips and rape among other things which are all doing well between the oat stems.
Second I don't own a sprayer, not even a one gallon hand pump one so just cross that off your list.
Third the land is too rough to harvest commercially so there is no dollar incentive here. I'm working to improve the soil not degrade it.
Third the plowing loosens up the soil counteracting decades of hoof compaction by livestock. What compaction the tractor reapplies while harrowing and seeding is negligible.
Forth there are plenty of weeds in it as I did not spray it. Part of that diversity you talk about and they are doing quite well. No matte!! I'm going to plow them under along with the green manure crop so they can add their carbon back to the soil.
What bothers me about you is all the things you know for sure that just ain't so.
Once the soil is ripped up and exposed (not it's natural state), it is then subjected to all of the processes of degradation, even if it's for a shorter time than most, it still has the same effects.
If you're forwarding a proposal, whereby you're sectioning off a piece of degraded/compacted land and then using temporary tillage in order to aerate and feed with organic material and then following on to a more benign perennial system, then that's one thing, but.....what you seem (without knowing any flexible additions) to be suggesting is that you're not doing any damage, based on the turning in of organic material principal and that this is your preferred long term model. Yes you've fed the soil, but....you've undone these efforts by having to obliterate it in the first place, plus it's cost carbon to do it.
Move to a more perennial system and you'll also find that the weeds will fall back.
I've fired across a fair heads up to you on some of the best practitioners (some of them already working for huge multi nationals, becuase they know fine well, and govs) in the world already, you've chosen to dismiss them because you know better.
