All this buckwheat talk inspired me a new avatar. love the little rascals. Never planted buckwheat before or seen amyone that has. Is it for forage, seed , or just a cover crop? Does it grow well in south bama.

Forage and cover crop.....Yes, it grows well in south bama.

When you changed your avatar, did you put the image into photobucket first? Trying to figure out how to attach an avatar onto my profile page.

I just made that one by editing a clip off YouTube. Find a video you like and click the share icon then select "copy link". Then Google -create gif from video you tube. Follow the directions to paste the video link and edit out the 5 or 6 second part you want for the gif. Once created copy link for the gif- I think it's the middle option-then put link in your profile.

Cool.....Thanks, I will give that a try.

Will the buckwheat shade out weeds?

Yes........

Buckwheat Link

I'll jump on your thread and spread the love Seriously, one of the bigger problems I see with your method is weed control. I've have established winter plots containing everything you can name, legumes, small grains, grasses, etc. but without chemicals I don't see how weeds could be effectively managed and not take over the plot. Continuous mowing definitely don't work. Eventually some of the tougher weeds will over take the plot without the use of chemicals

Crab grass by any chance? Tough stuff to get rid of.

Wish I could list them all. Not that good at identifying weeds by name. I know wildlife don't eat them. Thistle, pigweed, etc

Thistle, pigweed, sickelpod, lambs quarters, henbit, curly dock, Johnson grass, perennial ryegrass, Bermuda grass, wild vetch, Virginia creeper, mares tail want me to keep naming them CNC? Heck corn in a soybean field is a weed if it's undesirable. A weed is no specific plant just a plant that's not supposed to be in a specific place. Just so you'll understand.

Look to your woods and diversity that your are providing. You are not really managing for deer alone will all of that diversity. You are managing for a vibrantly functioning ecosystem of which the deer are a part of�..along with the quail, the squirrels, the turkey, the dove, the fox, etc..etc.. To have all of these animal components of the ecosystem present then it requires you to have that plant diversity which provides all of the different aspects of what the ecosystem needs to function.

The same is true in your fields as well but there are more animals to consider than just the ones we see above ground. To have this same vibrant ecosystem existing in our fields then that requires that we feed the soil with this same type diversity. Vibrant biological activity (soil animals) requires diversity provided to the soil through many different plant species in the same manner that you need many different plant species in the forest in order to support the many different animal species that exist there as well.....

Where do these �nasty� weeds that you guys are naming occur the most often?��In tilled and/or degraded field conditions, correct? When tillage is ceased then many of the weed problems we see begin to cease as well. When soil health conditions are improved and a very diverse constantly growing cover crop is applied to the field�..then the nasty weeds are not given the advantage anymore that they once had. Some chemical treatments may be necessary in the beginning but as diverse cover crops are established and tillage is ceased then there will be less need for these type treatments.

Like 257 said�..a weed is simply defined as a plant that you do not want in a specific place. When I started my no-till experiment, my soil was so degraded that crabgrass was one of the few things that would really thrive in those conditions. It was my mismanagement that allowed it to be able to dominate. It wasn�t a field of crabgrass when I first bought this property. It was a pasture of Bermuda grass with a diverse list of typical broadleaf plants that you might see growing in your woods after a fire�.ragweed. pokeweed, etc.. A natural system of diversity and no tillage in our fields do not allow those nasty weed species to get a foothold and take over�..it�s us that set the table for that to happen.

Here�s a question for debate���If we are growing a diverse mix of let�s say 15 different species for the purpose of wildlife management and soil health�..then why would something like ragweed be considered a �weed�? Is it not just the 16th specie amongst all the other diversity?

Here�s another scenario to think about�.I wish I had a pic to go along with the question��There�s a cow pasture just down the road from me here that one of my neighbors owns. It is extremely over grazed without ever getting a rest. The cows have it eaten to a nub and thistle is growing EVERYWHERE. Now do you think the solution to the farmer�s problem is to start spraying all of that thistle .....or is the solution to address the root cause of the thistle being there which is his management practices of severely over grazing the field and depleting soil health? Which will fix the problem long term?

This is the same thing we do in our fields as well. Instead of looking to the root cause of the problem, we look for a solution like spraying to treat a symptom of the mismanagement.

Overgrazing hasn't depleted the soil health. If he's that bad of a manager he's led to depleted soil health by not liming not spraying grazon and not applying P and K. You just grandstand on soil health way too much. Look at the big picture don't just point to a single source. There's a thing called BMP and IPM. Both utilize many approaches to solve problems not one single appraoch such as just soil health. It's just one cog in the wheel.

Ok 257��A question specifically for you��

What effect does over grazing have on the root system of the plants in the field?

Effects of Overgrazing on Soil Health

Did anyone notice the part of the Paul Brown video where he talked about how our native prairie lands were managed by the herds of roaming buffalo along with the other residential grazers/browsers that lived on smaller scales such as deer. The buffalo herds did not continually graze an area until it was depleted. The came through�..ate a little�.trampled a lot�.and moved on. The impact of this short term �mob grazing� by the buffalo was that they fed the soil carbon through the biomass that they trampled down.... along with converting another part of that biomass to nutrient filled, biologically active manure. The result of this process was a vibrant, flourishing grassland or prairie ecosystem which the other resident animals then utilized and benefited from. None of this requied Grazon, lime, P&K applications, nor weed control. This is the same natural system that can be replicated using cattle to imitate the impact of the buffalo�..that is if they are managed correctly.

Ok Yota will you quit quoting google search info because you're getting so much rhetoric going now it's stupid. Thistle didn't grow because of depleted soil health. Thistle grew because of reduced competition by overgrazing. So we spray it to kill it. You don't know jackshit about modern agriculture. The world would starve to death if it was full of dipshits like you.

I think I�m going to do something I have never done before 257 and put you on my ignore list�.You refuse to add anything truly constructive to the conversation and you seem to be content on doing nothing more than juvenile name calling and trying to distract others with BS. If you want to keep on trying to persuade folks that the solution to all their problems runs directly though your bottom line�.then by all means go ahead. But I�ll leave you with some advice�..The more and more you talk�.the more and more you make it apparent that you don�t know how to play anything else other than checkers. Adios amigo�.

This is a good video on soil health. It�s a little long but well worth taking the time to watch when you have the time. It will give you a better idea of the importance of diversity in our fields. Again, I'm not sure what I'm doing to cause the videos to start in the middle....just pull your meter back to the start of the video.

Dr Jill Clapperton on Soil Health

257 I'm glad you in the ring now instead of me. Was worn down last week. I've got a serious question that will may get this thread back to more than arguing. Other than weed control, what are some of the benefits of tillage, and why do most of the big commercial farmers continue to till. I'm sure cost is one barrier but I see farmers spend hundreds of thousands on huge, new planters and continue to till. Why don't all farmers simply spray and drill?

one reason these days is soil compaction. We run so many big heavy grain carts combines and tractors over the ground especially the end rows we've started back with more tillage. But the main reason now is resistant weeds. We're back to using more residual herbicides which require tillage to incorporate like Treflan or cotoran and such that were using a lot of turbo tills. It's vertical tillage were using now more than breaking plows and rippers. There are some other reasons but that's the main 2 around north Alabama anyway. Thank god I finally made CNC's ignore list.