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Fallon County - Model Nutrient Cycles

Background Info/ Historical Story:


                        “Soil Needs Decayed Vegetation

Soil should be well supplied with organic matter, if the best results are obtained. Organic matter should be applied to soils because it holds nitrogen and when the supply of organic matter decreases the nitrogen decreases. Organic matter is also important as an aid in holding moisture and keeping the soil in good tilth. A soil depleted or organic runs together and cakes badly after rain. It bakes if worked a little wet and plows up lumpy if plowed dry. It also absorbs water slowly and will hold less water than a similar soil well supplied with organic matter. Organic matter is the principal food of bacteria.

        Organic matter decays rapidly in cultivated soil. The more frequently the land is plowed and the more intensively it is cultivated, the more rapid the loss of this material. Soils cropped continuously to corn, kaffir, or other cultivated crops are usually depleted in organic more rapidly than soils cropped to small grain while land seeded down to alfalfa or grass may increase rather than diminish in organic matter.


Straw is Valuable

        Wheat straw is undoubtedly one of the most valuable by-products of the farms of Montana but at present much of it is burned or otherwise destroyed. This straw, if properly used on the land, would supply not only organic matter but would also add several million dollars worth of plant food annually. The economical way of handling straw is to utilize as much of it as possible for feed and bedding, applying the manure produced to the soil. Straw can also be applied as a surface dressing on wheat during the winter or as a top dressing on corn or sorghum ground at the rate of one to one and a half tons to the acre. Heavier applications are not advisable on growing wheat. When top dressings of this kind are made of straw acts as a surface mulch and aids in the conservation of moisture. Later, it becomes incorporated in the soil mass. Straw may be spread from a hay rack or with a straw spreader.


                                Crops and Fertility

        When it is impossible to supply sufficient barnyard manure, straw, corn stalks, weeds and other forms of plant material to maintain the supply of humus in the soil, it may become necessary to grow crops to be plowed under. These may be leguminous crops, including cowpeas, soy beans, clover and sweet clover, or non-leguminous crops, such as rye, buckwheat, turnips and sorghums. Where conditions are favorable for growing leguminous crops, they are preferable, since they add nitrogen as well as organic matter to the soil. When clover is grown it is often possible to harvest the first crop for hay and to plow under the second growth in the fall.


                                Planting Cowpeas

Cowpeas make an excellent green manuring crop. One of the best practices is to sow the crop on disked or plowed wheat or oat stubble as soon after harvest as possible. The peas may be drilled in close rows, or in rows wide enough apart to permit cultivation. The peas should be plowed under just before frost and the field planted to corn, kaffir, or some other annual sorghum crop the next spring, rather than to a fall crop like wheat. When handled in this way the green material will partly decay during the winter months and the undesirable effects of seeding on a loose seedbed will be avoided.


                                Clover Grows Well

Sweet clover is another valuable green manuring crop. It makes a rapid rank growth, and when plowed under adds large quantities of organic matter and nitrogen to the soil. It is a hardy, vigorous feeding crop, and can be started successfully on soils so poor that other crops make an unsatisfactory growth. A good plan is to seed sweet clover in late winter or early spring and to use it during the latter part of the first season and the first part of the second season for pasture. After the middle of July of the second year the clover should be allowed to grow in order to make a rank growth of organic matter to plow under before frost in the fall. In some sections where moisture is a factor, it is not usually advisable to grow green manuring crops, because of the large amount of moisture they remove from the soil in their growth. In this case all other sources of organic matter should be utilized before resorting to green-manuring crops.”

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