Learn Something Today: Small Scale No Till Farming...Building Soil From A to Z!

this will make the blooper reel hey folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome to the farm vlog today we are with Lane Simpson here on his farm we are in what area of North Carolina we're in Oregon Hill North Carolina Oregon Hill North Carolina and Lane is taking back old tobacco farms and using a no-till drill method of farming that we don't see a lot around here so well let Lane tell you a little bit about what he's doing and we'll walk around and we'll show you some of the plants that he's planning to bring back the land to bring back the soil here in these old tobacco farms in the most eroded section of the country yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] so lame tell me what we got going on here what I normally do is I are old farms that people conventional - we will go in and try to keep something on the land all the time okay that kind of keeps everything from the road and going back into the ponds back into the creeks we try to have something going all the time as far as the land because you got you got bees all kind of beneficial insects that come from all different kind of cover crops yeah and also you know just cash crops that we plant each and every year right now I see out here we're looking at a field that you're taking back right now that you planted this fall and you planted what soybeans winter peas crimson clover and right okay winter peas crimson clover and ride you planted that what last land in October yep okay now right after now tobacco was actually two years ago on this farm okay but we just we just got this year so this is what we're starting off this is how we start off on everything gotcha so this is his first step in repairing the land and we're gonna take a quick look or a detailed look at the soil and how he's bringing the land back here in just a minute we're gonna take a look at the plants that he's using and we're here basically to gather information for our farm because we've got some new open land and we want to do the right thing to build biomass in the soil to get the worms to get the nitrogen to do what's right instead of throwing and dumping that fake fertilizer that's right you know it's petroleum-based fertilizers and we don't want to do that we want to do it right we want to provide nitrogen we want to provide substance for the soil and lane here I was introduced to him probably two and a half three years ago and he was growing son help now son help isn't a hemp like you know smoke you know you smoke it you don't get hemp oil or anything like that but it provides a huge amount of biomass per acres right how much biomass is that it's like five or six tones per acre well what we're looking at here how much is the tonnage per acre probably oh this ray is probably at least three to four tons per acre gotcha gotcha but will this fix nitrogen just just as much as the Sun hemp to Sun him actually fix nitrogen it does okay some hemp does pretty good any leg Hume does really good got you the winter peas and the clover hairy vetch is another really good one that its way up there as far as nitrogen fixation on all the land and stuff gotcha now did you fertilize this before you planted it or anything you just put it in the ground it give us just bare ground so you know fertilizing whatsoever has been put on this farm so the first thing you did was go over it did you turn it and disc it furrow okay so you just ran over it with the no-till drill we have with three seeds there was a couple little places that were left over from the tobacco farm that needed to be leveled up so to speak gotcha we did take a little leveling here over it and just to kind of shape it up so it ain't so rough on the planter and me so with a guy that's just now starting a new plot of land and he's just getting this start so he's bought an old farm and it's old and dilapidated kind of like what we bought and it's grown up in trees and brush you can go right straight in say you clear off the trees and brush you go right in and you drill down this three seed combination and that will build your soil enough that the next year you can start planting grass I guess fescue grass if you grow hay well it really depends on the type of soil you got you know the purpose you really need to think about what you're gonna do with it right is it gonna be passion land is it gonna be are you gonna grow Road crops on it you know corn soybeans like we are are you gonna do vegetables right you know each each crop will will depend on what I normally my my blend that I normally put in it's gonna depend on my cash crop so the blend that you have here is for what crops I do corn or soybeans on this one corn and soybeans also because the corn is going to use up a lot of nitrogen so you want to plant nitrogen fixation plants on it of course because it'll be there when the corn comes up nitrogen already be there gotcha so corn is a heavy feeder I guess they call it a heavy feeder of nitrogen as well as Tomatoes stuff like that so they're heavy feeders of nitrogen they require a lot of nitrogen most farmers like out in Iowa and all these different places they just hit it with a straight ammonium nitrate oh yes just pile nitrogen on so the corn goes boom and grows really tall pops out that ear corn and you get tons of bushels per acre it's the easy way it's the easy way out yeah it's the cheating way and it's destroying our streams and destroying our land and causing erosion and this is the solution so you want to take them show them a little bit more sure all right now come on over here and follow me and I'll show you what's going on right here with two over guys we've got rye which is about five feet tall because I'm about I don't know if I four and then what I try to do is I try to level my level all of my canopies and stuff on my cover crops so what I try to do is I try to do something tall like a rye and then these winter peas right here as you can see they they will actually run up they stalk if if you've got something to run up on and then right down below in the canopy I've got crimson clover which are both nitrogen fixers and that will be available for the next crop whenever we decide to plant this alright so what we want to do now is we want to talk about nodulation on all the legumes that I plant a lot of times what would do is when when they start blooming as you can see these are in full bloom right now there's actually peas and pods on them that tells me that it's time to to terminate the crop and the way we do that here is a we do a roller crimper method which is basically a great big drum that rolls over and crimps every five inches of the stem which will actually kill that plant I want to talk about a little bit about nodulation on all these legumes alright so what we did all we did was we we dug up some roots and you can see all those little nodules and each one of those is atmospheric nitrogen that come out of there the plant took it up and stored it in the root system that's what those little green dots can you touch him yeah green dots right there oh yeah dad that's nitrogen fixation that's exactly right and what that's doing when we after we roll this crop we will this nitrogen will be right here on top of the surface getting ready to be absorbed by the new crop that we're gonna put in so your corn or your soybeans will be ready to just suck it up and take off we're going to just basically simulate just taking a roller crimper and doing it and basically all of the all we're gonna do is we want to step it step over the crop push it over and then step on the stems so you want it to all go one way just like this right here and then that's going to good right there yeah and then what you've got you've got a really nice mat that you can plant into and what we'll do is we'll take our drill and we'll come right in here and there's a there's a culture on the front that cuts me a slit in right here opens to land up and then I've got a double disc opener in the back that will that will spread it apart drop the seed down I've got another press where that comes right back in presses right down it keeps the the weeds from germinating after you get the planet you've got this mat on here and also helps with moisture retention because the Sun when the Sun hits the soil in evaporates all you order is just evaporating and then also your nutrients can leach out through the soil too once the Sun hits it it's just it leeches out as this as this mat breaks down into the micron micronutrients that is also a feeding ground for your earthworms your different funguses your your your good fungus that grows in the soil and all kinds of microorganisms will actually feed off and they will eat all of this biomass that you're producing it's a new style of farming that we're all leaning toward so we don't have to use antibiotics so that we're not relying on petroleum based fertilizers so that our meats are better there better for us and they don't continue this epidemic of obesity and diabetes that we have in our country so now we're going to go look at some that's already been crimped and laid over what a couple weeks ago yep and plant it so you'll get to see the actual beam coming up through the rope all right lane so we're gonna field that you've already rolled in crimp right that's exactly right okay we're gonna look down in here and we're going to see what are we gonna see we're gonna see what's left over of our radishes we're gonna talk a little bit about those and what they're gonna do for our soybean crop coming in and also look gonna look at this nice pretty mat that this cover crop is gonna give us to help host emotion and this field is how many years in the works this is the fourth year whew nice let's get down close to the ground check it out basically we just pulled back this this really nice thick mat that really covers the ground really good and as you can see is right here is a tuber that's left over from our radish and most of the times these radishes are anywhere from a foot to two feet deep and they're normally about 2 to 3 inches in diameter it holds a lot of nutrients in that tuber that it has and that's the reason that I plant it and it also breaks up the soil because that thing is going down in the ground and driving this soil apart enabling the water to go down into the ground as it decays and breaks down if you look real close right here was talking about no tilling beans and stuff inside of here basically what it does it'll come through here and cut a trench a real small slit the one double disc opener will open up the ground places the seed in and you can see real close right here you see we got a seed here coming up see you here seed here so forth and so on and then right beside of this seeds right here is gonna be our tuber as this breaks down it really does think though that's the only bad thing that I don't like about radishes as they real they smell terrible so you're saying these are called daikon radishes right or killers radishes okay okay and they will burrow down to a foot foot and a half yep okay and they provide a nutrient for the soil they rot they also aerate the soil and provide nutrients for worms and microbes - that's right just let all those nutrients go right back into that top layer so where all these see all these seeds are coming up - cool so the no-till drill doesn't tell but the radish pills for you and gets the nutrients down deeper into the soil oh yeah I like - oh yeah right here the other beneficial thing that I like about no tilling and cover crops and always having you know something on the landfill you know the worms and the fun guys all kinds of microorganisms to eat is this right here when we go to a field and you can take a shovel and find earthworms you know by the handfuls and you can look at each you can look at the profile of a soil you got your red clay right here and you've got this is the top layer which we've been working on and this is what we're striving for to get this brown lomi dirt to keep building organic matter because it's just gonna get deeper and deeper and it's real easy to plant in - once you get it to this stage you can go through here with just a set of double disc opener you don't even have to have a set of cultures on the front of the planter you can see all these little passages and stuff where the worms have been before and all that is is the passage for the rain to filter down into the land it won't get to this it won't get to this clay right here and just run off you want all of the rain that falls to actually go into the ground guys I hope you've enjoyed this little insight into soil into no-till drilling into building your soil for your farm lane I appreciate you taking the time and saluting with us at about awesome we'll be back here you guys are gonna make molasses is that right yeah in the fall we'll be back here in the fall to make molasses you got a saw my operation will be back to show you that all kinds of fun stuff so thanks a lot guys we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge farm blog I appreciate you found that like button subscribe to the channel you ready for the woo woo [Music] Pearse we had some ways opposed to me stone Tyrion [Music] just basically see how it makes everybody look short when I start talking so I can squat down a little bit and then probably will do that al menos hanky taller that's all big brother I'm abnormally I'm just have me out of the freakin gorilla man so for a non gorillas purposes what I'll do is I'll split in my legs out splay out a bit and then we'll be normal people height we think this will make the blooper reel [Laughter] it also will release micronutrients we're gonna find my spot again all right we're in a field that you as all of these these different plants break down they give off they off gas all natural I guess fuse that are good for who hun do that over again here we go [Applause]