Continual Living Root
Soil Health Principle Descriptions by Jay Fuhrer, Menoken Farm Conservationist
Principle 4
The first time we look at cover crops we usually question the seed cost, labor, equipment, time, water, nutrient, and even the social acceptance of partners, neighbors, and friends. Given time, our thoughts go to asking what benefits additional plant physiology can provide on my farm? It starts by understanding every green plant is a carbon inlet and provides the microbial world with carbon sugar exudates the first 4-8 weeks. Cover crops can check several soil health principles simultaneously. Consequently, very few Best Management Practices can compare with covers when it comes to providing food and a home for life.
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Our perennial grasslands and forests consisted of a highly diverse plant community. Adaptable plants would grow during the cool spring and fall weather, as well as the summer heat. This allowed continual live plants photosynthesizing and providing carbon exudates to the soil food web during the entire growing season. Today’s cropland systems typically grow annual cash crops, which have a dormant period before planting and after harvest. Cover crops can fill in the dormant period and provide the missing photosynthesis and live root exudate, which is the soil food web’s primary food source. Cover crops may be incorporated into a cropping system as annuals, biennials, or perennials. Diverse cover crops set the stage for a diverse microbial community, which in turn will support the following cash crop. Starting with a small acre scale will allow farmers, ranchers, and gardeners to find their operations best fit.
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Annuals are generally planted immediately after harvest. Consisting of cool season grasses and broadleaves. Providing armor over the fall, winter, and early spring; during this time period the cover will be green in the fall and depending on where you farm, may be brown or green during the winter and early spring.
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Biennials are also planted immediately after harvest. However, they will provide a green fall and a green spring, giving a longer photosynthesis period. Biennials allow more planting options, as they also provide a popular “planting green” option.
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Perennials provide much larger root systems and strongly mimic our original landscapes. For operations without grasslands, they can be re-established, managed grazed, and rotated through a cropping system for a set number of years; eventually returning to a cash crop. They have also been used on a narrow strip bases with wide row corn.
The resource concerns which can be addressed by a continual live plant are extensive. A few major ones include the following:
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Wind and Water Erosion - as old as agriculture itself. We can’t build soils and sequester carbon when erosion is present.
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Water Quality and Quantity - nutrients shouldn’t leave our fields. Covers give us a safe place to store the nutrients, then decomposition and release for the next cash crop. Additional soil carbon holds additional water.
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Harvest Carbon Dioxide and Sunlight – they drive our cropping, grazing, and gardening systems.
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Pollinators and Wildlife – food and a home.
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Salinity – plant respiration always buys us something, soil evaporation always costs us something.
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Building Soil Aggregates – continually building and rebuilding soil aggregates and pore spaces.
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Livestock – returning and maintaining a livestock presence on our landscapes.
Let’s paint our landscapes green and let the continual live plants do the rest!
Featured Farm
Prairie Hills Ranch
Cody and Medora Kologi
Moffit, North Dakota 58560
Prairie Hills Ranch is located in south central Burleigh County, comprised of both cropland and native grassland acres. It is home to Cody and Medora Kologi, along with their four daughters; Harper 9, Kennedy 7, Luella 4, and Jentry 2. The Kologi’s started with their first livestock (cow/calf pairs) in 2015 and by 2016 they were ranching using a familiar and conventional management style. Consisting of set stocking, season long grazing, high inputs, corn silage, baling hayland, and usually early winter feeding at the headquarters. By 2017/2018 it was apparent their cash flow meant their ownership goal was out of reach. Cody summarized this period by saying, “we tried to pay for expensive cows with cheap calves.” The next few years continued to be difficult; the soil resource was impacted with low plant vigor and noxious weeds on grasslands, and cropland acres with the cover removed for livestock feed, while the high workload demanded time away from family and continuing education.
Yes, this was a difficult period. However, Medora said, “when we asked ourselves what we loved? The answer was grazing livestock.” They already had seen some improvements when winter feeding bales away from the headquarters, no-tilling the cropland acres, and swath grazing forages on cropland, but they were soon to take even big steps. The Kologi’s started by attending courses and workshops to increase their knowledge base regarding grazing management, animal performance, soil health principles, economics, marketing, and succession to name a few. Some of the major classes included: the Joel Salatin school , which helped them think differently and energized them; Ranching for Profit School, which helped the business end by implementing major points soon after attending; Burleigh County Soil Conservation District – Soil Health Events, which helped the Kologi’s implement all the Soil Health Principles and soon found Cody serving as a board supervisor. Medora pointed out, “we must have a focus on both grass management and animal performance, they go together.”
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Moving forward to 2020 we see the start of major changes. A 45-paddock grazing system and livestock pipeline with tanks were installed with assistance from NRCS. Animal performance is monitored and evaluated with scale weights and calculated break evens. Cropland acres are no-till planted to a diverse combination of warm season and cool season plants for managed grazing, recycling the nutrients in lieu of exporting them. Direct marketing is added, utilizing a percentage of the grass-based meat protein to create cash flow. In addition, the ranch moves in the direction of a yearling operation.
During the 2020 – 2024 period, management opportunities were taken advantage of. 1,000 yearlings now were being moved as one live being, becoming a unique tool for the Continual Live Plant – Soil Health Principle. Cody explained, “the 45 paddocks are permanent, but we can intensify our management by splitting with temporary fence as needed.” Now sand dune areas vegetated, noxious weeds lessen, as plant vigor improved by using short duration exposure periods and long duration recovery periods. Eric Richard, Medora’s father and ranch partner added, “the livestock will tell you when it is time to move, as they ignore the 4-wheeler when satisfied”. The grazing system also is used to manage flies, as the herd moves away from the manure. While on the cropland side, the livestock usually graze the diverse forage stands twice during the growing season. Lightly topping them each time, which supplies a high plain of nutrition while allowing adequate leaf length for regrowth. The managed animal impact resets the plant community, extending the harvest of photosynthetic energy, ultimately making more carbon available to the soil via the root mass. The diverse plant mixtures vary, and have included: sudan, sorghum, millet, sunflower, soybean, lentil, forage pea, barley, oats, turnip, and kale. Cereal rye is also an option used to allow a 2 week earlier grazing startup, followed then by a warm season mixture. The diverse mixtures are also designed with pollinators in mind, always supplying flowering plants. As the Kologi’s implemented all five Soil Health Principles, the cropland and grasslands acres responded in a regenerative manner.
Going forward the Kologi’s list several thoughts, such as extending the livestock pipeline, corral infrastructure improvement, utilizing the grazing mixtures to further provide flexible management opportunities for custom grazing along with swath and bale grazing, and expanding livestock numbers. The relationships they have fostered when attending workshops, marketing, community, and neighbors have been the greatest asset to inspire and support their operation. Medora explains, “now it’s more fun, less work, and more profitable, with a succession plan back on the table for 2025.”
