Results of continuous no-till and cover crops in heavy clay soil

hello everyone my name is Matt Burkholder I'm a fourth generation farmer and owner of Burke holder healthy farms in Allen County Ohio today I would like to share with you a little bit about my regenerative agricultural story on this field here in Allen County Ohio when I started farming this field I was doing full tillage there were three wet holes in particular in this field that I was farming around it's a 28 Acre Farm there's only one acre of that has drainage style in this field so like I said I was farming around three wet holes and you know that's kind of frustrating driving around wet holes all the time the landowner didn't want to put drainage tile in I said you know that's fine we can work with that so I quit tilling up the muck it's heavy clay soils here we are near Cairo we call it the Cairo clay it's not not super super quality soil so in 2012 I started continuous no-till and cover crops the soil began to slowly change and after about five years I was no longer working planting around those wet holes I was driving through because the wet holes disappeared the soil structure has slowly improved approximately about five years ago I cut out commercial salt-based fertilizer or soybeans and corn I still use some salt-based fertilizer in the fall before wheat we grow corn soybeans and wheat but cut out the salt based fertilizer about three years ago we cut out seed treatment on soybeans and Seed treatment on wheat saberx on wheat and I apply living microbes and inoculant my seed dealer does that on my soybeans so like I said this is heavy clay soil regenerative agriculture works if I can do it on this lower quality Farm with heavy clay you can do it on your better quality Farms I'm doing it on a poor quality farm and I also do it on better quality Farms it takes a little bit longer to see some change the poor Quality Farms but it can work I'm the field is currently planted to winter wheat like I said there was no seed treatment on that just the saber-x it is very dry here but the wheat is looking well looking good like I said the field has not been plowed since 2011. right now it's 2022. so it has had one vertical tillage pass in that time that was just a shallow pass to take out a few sprayer tracks but other than that it's been continuous no-tilling covers right now I'm seeing about five earthworms per shovel fold when I started this process I had one earthworm per shop so I want to share my story with you today you can do it keep keep working at it maybe find a local farmer in your area that's involved in regenerative AG reach out to them and I'm sure they would be glad to help you on your help you on your journey so God bless and have a good day

Channel: One Good Idea

Views: 52,560

Keywords:

Id: nCEgFjklwQo

Length: 3min 30sec (210 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 21 2022