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| My Soil Conservation agent tells me that a vast majority of my pasture land that I want to "reclaim" has so much saline and is so compacted/poorly drained that all I can plant in it is western wheatgrasses. He claims that ponderosa pine won't grow there. This is from the geologic mapping and not from actual soil testing. So....my theory is that over time (I suppose I may not live long enough for this to work.) that it can be improved with compost, etc. He looks at me like I'm nuts which I may be. He said, "maybe" planting sugar beats would help to aerate the soil so I was thinking about planting the grasses with things like turnips and rutabagas and beats; basically things with deep roots. Thoughts? Suggestions? Mary Ann
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I have found here that soil testing has never disproved satellite soil mapping, but by all means, with the meager cost of soil sampling, it is in your best interest to have some soil samples taken just to be sure. As is, you will get more detailed information then soil mapping would anyway.
But I think you conservation planner is indeed right. One thing the organic movement had done was created this idea that compost is the end-all/be-all to soil amendments and that is just not the case. There is such a thing as too much organic matter and there are times when you do NOT want to add organic matter to the soil. Poor drainage is one of them.
The best example of an overabundance of organic matter is a swamp. It is teeming with old vegetation, but is so water logged that nothing will grow their because oxygen cannot get down into the ground. Decomposition takes place, but its very slow and of course water is saturated in the soil. So adding organic matter to this situation is not going to help it, only hurt it right? To a lesser extent that is what you have...poorly drained soil where water moves through the soil slowly. Adding organic matter is only going to clog that up making the soil heavier then it already is.
You need to lighten the soil instead. Adding sand is the best way, but that would be too time consuming and expensive. The best practical option is adding perlite which is a grainular product that they use to lighten the soil in topsoils and such.
I wished you lived in Maine. We have a product here that is called Agrifiber, which is a processed seaweed that comes from a plant in Rockland. It is considered a lime alternative and is teeming with perlite, a little organic matter and lots of micro nutrients. But the thing is, it really lightens the soil because its the consistency of brown sugar. Its also free and takes 12 tons to equal one ton of lime. In my case its a pain...lots of transportation costs to get what I want (lime), yet for you that whopping tonnage would really lighten your soil. But other option exist, like possibly fly ash and other industry by-products. You will have to check around, many of these things are free if you take enough of it and it sounds like that won't be a problem.
The reason organic matter is great in most places however, is because the well drained soils are often farmed to excess and have been for years. The first hundred years the soil was fine, it had enough organic matter from the trees or sod that were cleared to make room for the fields. Now though, with modern farming using non-organic fertilizers, the soil is pretty much dead. It needs organic matter back in the soil to get earth worms to propagate, it needs good bacteria to jump start this decomposition process which allows the plant roots to uptake those nutrients and grow. Organic matter does all that, but in concentrations of 8% or more, organic matter can be in excess....and that is in well drained soil.
I am surprised he said to plant root crops through like sugar beets. Typically they take well drained soil because root crops like sugar beets, potatoes and turnip tend to rot in the ground if the soil does not drain water away from the crop after rain storms. I don't understand that, but maybe he was not thinking in terms of a quality crop and just what it would do for the soil.
If I needed something with deep roots, I think I would go with alfalfa provided your PH was over 6. Those plants send down a tap root 20 feet down, and even in bedrock, they find cracks in the rock and drive roots down deep. Withe a little nitrogen fixation, they do the soil a world of good by plucking nitrogen out of the air and stuffing it back in the soil. But I don't know if it grows well in your area or not.
******
"When its all said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground, it is the farmer that is the richest man of all."
Spoken by Alfred, a full time dairy farmer in 2008 while chopping grass silage. He was NOT talking about monetary value however...
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| Thanks, Draw. I have a test kit so I'm going to check several places. I was looking at alfalfa for the reasons you suggested. I think the idea with the beats is to make "big holes" and once established they can handle the saline. I think "how much" saline is the key question. I've been pulling stuff off the internet as to research and as organic farmers will always say...you have to utilize what can adapt to the land and climate you have and go from there but there are some oftions so we'll see wht I can figure out. Mary Ann
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I'm not very familiar with saline soil, but ours tends to be high in manganese. Its well drained soil at least (gravely loam) but it tends to have compaction issues, which is why we crop rotate here so much. Plowing up ground that was used for haying and going back to corn on a 5 year rotation, is whats best for the soil here.
We grow some alfalfa, but it does not do so well here. Its not very winter hardy, and most of the fields are located on hills. That means the snow gets blown off and then the alfalfa gets killed of by the cold since its not insulated by the snow. But the biggest issue is the acidic soil. Alfalfa likes a PH of 7 and we run in the low 5's without a lot of lime or lime addatives.
As I said, I don't know much about saline type soils, but I can see why the conservation planner looked at you funny. Organic matter is gold on most farms, but you have to have the drainage or it makes matters worse, that's all. Sounds like you need perlite.
******
"When its all said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground, it is the farmer that is the richest man of all."
Spoken by Alfred, a full time dairy farmer in 2008 while chopping grass silage. He was NOT talking about monetary value however...
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| Our soils run the other way on PH. What I read says that no till is best so you don't keep bringing up the saline soil. I guess alfalfa does so well here because it's so flat and it has plenty of insulation!! But there are natural prairie grasses that grow on this and one of the neighbors took hay off it this year and has in the past so it has benefits, and all those buffalo couldn't have been completely wrong about living on it!!
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| Im afraid your soil conservation agent is right. Saline soils are caused by having too much salt in the soil. In this case "salts" doesnt refer to salt as we know it (NaCl) but chemical salts like manganese or magnesium. The only way to alleviate it with organic matter is to bury it under at least 8 inches of compost...in which case you arent really farming the land so much as the compost. Adding fertilizer will make it worse. The only way to get the salts out is to wash them out with irrigation. This will take a huge amount of water and time. I am assuming you are out west since this is the only area that doesnt receive enough rainfall to keep salts washed out of the soil. I dont know if irrigation is feasible for you, but good luck.
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I have some probiotics here that is supposed to help break down the salts Rob13 speaks of. The idea is that the soil is kind of lifeless without some sort of good bacteria culture breaking down those salts, minerals and nutrients so that plants can uptake that stuff.
I tried it with a small corn plot, but I did not see a noticeable difference, but I am not sure I should of. Here we use a lot of cow manure to fertilize the fields so the bacteria would be there anyway, and the soil is far from lifeless since its teeming with earthworms and whatnot. I am wondering however if maybe soil probiotics would help your situation though. ???
******
"When its all said and done, and the coffin goes in the ground, it is the farmer that is the richest man of all."
Spoken by Alfred, a full time dairy farmer in 2008 while chopping grass silage. He was NOT talking about monetary value however...
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 3/15/2010 12:11:28 PM
Posts: 283,
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| According to my research, our "saline soils" comes mostly from a combination of being the left overs of glaciers receeding back in the day and some current weather pattersn (I won't suggest it's climate change as that would start a whole other discussion.) where we have more rain and the water table has risen dramatically in my part of the state. It is a combination of a variety of "sulfates" (magnisium and sodium). At any rate, there are 3 recommended solutions here: The first is leaching through irrigation (both impractical and expensive), drain tiles (VERY EXPENSIVE) and no till/shallow tilling and planting crops like alfalfa and sweet clover, barley and winter rye and sugar beets; things that will draw out a lot of water and open up the soil. So my plans for next year will be to sow natural grasses (mostly wheatgrass) that can handle the salinity, a lot of alfalfa and clover, some barley and sugar beets for the spring/summer and try to add some rye next fall. It's not like it's barren land it's just that I want to improve the nutrition available for the pasture and keep the cat tails from taking over. I will be doing some composting and putting that on but that will probably be in the fall and do a green manure crop. Thanks for your feedback. Mary Ann
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