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Denver, CO

I would like to try planting Oat as spring crop to add biomass to my soil. I believe I can have them to tilling size by mid may.

Who else does this? How long after tilling is the tied uo nitorgen back and available to the pumpkins? Is thier added nitorgen from the tilled Oat as well? How much? Dont want to cause aborts down the road, but would like to add porosity to my soil for air and water.

3/27/2009 7:46:31 PM

southwest MO

Baby oats make great green manure...

3/28/2009 1:37:30 PM

Menomonie, WI (mail@gr8pumpkin.net)

What are you trying to add? Look up Green Manure vs Cover Crop.

3/28/2009 2:31:43 PM

Upstate S.C.

Whats the difference is Green manure AND cover crop, I thought they were the same....

3/28/2009 5:49:30 PM

Denver, CO

Thanks Boy Genius. Sound like a plant. Anybody else have an opinion?

Linus, this is what I know.

copied From http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/covercrop.html

"Green manuring" involves the soil incorporation of any field or forage crop while green or soon after flowering, for the purpose of soil improvement.

A cover crop is any crop grown to provide soil cover, regardless of whether it is later incorporated. Cover crops are grown primarily to prevent soil erosion by wind and water.

A summer green manure occupies the land for a portion of the summer growing season. These warm-season cover crops can be used to fill a niche in crop rotations, to improve the conditions of poor soils, or to prepare land for a perennial crop. Legumes such as cowpeas, soybeans, annual sweetclover, sesbania, guar, crotalaria, or velvet beans may be grown as summer green manure crops to add nitrogen along with organic matter.

Non-legumes such as sorghum-sudangrass, millet, forage sorghum, or buckwheat are grown to provide biomass, smother weeds, and improve soil tilth. (end of copying)

That last paragraph sounds like what I would want to do to my patch this year if I can. From what I have read and listening to Gary Zimmer's tape, Oats are a great route to go.

I was wondering who has tried this in the past, and how well it worked to improve the soil structure. Did it "open up spaces" within the soil more then conventional tilling?

3/28/2009 5:53:00 PM

Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

http://gvgo.ca/mb/index.php?topic=504.0

3/28/2009 7:27:58 PM

Denver, CO

Thanks! Thats intresting CountyKid. It's completley oppossite of just about anything else I have read. I dont want to use up the avaiable nitorgen that I have.

However, I am not sure they actually concluded thier was no nitrogen relase back in the spring of the tilled and decomposed matter. I dont really know?

They state in thier report that "fate of the cover crop (Nitrogen) is not clear excpet that little of it was probably taken up by the the nex corn crop."

Additionally, they tried to actively grow a crop on top of the soil and measure nitrogen aviability supplied by previous cover crop at the same time. Thus the Corn is pulling up nitorgen while at the same time they are trying to get a reading of how much nitorgen is there.

As the main point of the research was to find out if cover crops can sequester fall nitorgen, I guess they decieded they did not need to research as to where the hell the nitrogen went after it was sequestered. Bummer for us! It surley went somewhere! Cant imagine why they would not have answered that question.

3/28/2009 8:24:57 PM

Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

I think the conclusion was that the cover crop does a good job of taking in nitrogen and keeping it from leaching into the enviroment. It just dosn't re-release it back to the next crop at least not right away. The whole point is that the cover crop will not help you increase the available N in the planting year!

3/28/2009 10:37:18 PM

southwest MO

Don't worry so much about the N ghopson. Nitrogen levels are easy to raise. I'm sitting about 30 lbs/acre NO3-N in sandy soil under a foot annual rye. disc, chizel, disc.

3/29/2009 1:03:12 AM

Picton,ON (j.vincent@xplornet.ca)

Looking back at your origional post, growing oats to add biomass is a great idea. Go for it!

3/29/2009 7:26:01 AM