{"id":466,"date":"2014-02-28T13:30:18","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T13:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coverartdesign.com\/?p=466"},"modified":"2014-02-28T13:30:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T13:30:18","slug":"sustainable-methods-for-dealing-with-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csi0926.cldo.com\/?p=466","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable Methods For Dealing With Drought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<em>By Philip A. Wheeler, Ph.D.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The first point to make is that it is easier to prepare for drought before you are in one than to try to rescue yourself from one your already experiencing.\u00a0\u00a0Regardless of what stage your in the principles which will be addressed here are the same.<\/p>\n<p>Three processes are involved: Capturing the rain that falls on your farm, holding a good portion of it in the topsoil for immediate use, and allowing the rest to go into the subsoil where it can come back up to the topsoil when needed.<\/p>\n<p>Capturing rain requires good soil structure.\u00a0\u00a0Good soil structure is usually damaged by simplistic N-P-K fertilization.\u00a0\u00a0Growers need to learn that there are six major nutrients; calcium, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, and sulfur.\u00a0\u00a0Calcium is the king of nutrients and must be dealt with outside of the pH concept.\u00a0\u00a0A good cation exchange test [CEC] will help you begin to balance the 6 majors to influence structure. At the same time as you are using nutrients to attempt to correct structure, you can also use sub-soiling and soil conditioners to get rain to go through the topsoil and into the subsoil.<\/p>\n<p>Advanced methods of holding moisture where it falls include contour plowing, strip cropping, terraces etc.\u00a0\u00a0Cover crops always hold more rainfall than bare ground.\u00a0\u00a0For advanced total concept water retention, look into permaculture (created in Australia where water is extremely precious.)<\/p>\n<p>Holding moisture in the topsoil requires the presence of biologically active carbon.\u00a0\u00a0The main source of this is organic matter that has been turned into humus by the digestion of microbes.\u00a0\u00a0In order to get the soil biology to come back, a grower has to learn how to reduce chemical inputs that impact the microbes and provide new food sources for them.\u00a0\u00a0Changing to post emergence herbicides is a start.\u00a0\u00a0Direct application of carbohydrates such as molasses or sugar provides high energy feed for the microbes to use when they are taking up nitrogen for retention against leaching and release when needed by the plant.\u00a0\u00a0Green manure crops should be disked into the surface to provide a more complete food supply for the microbes.\u00a0\u00a0Treating them with small amounts of N and sugar will assure their immediate breakdown for use by the current crop.\u00a0\u00a0The presence of good humus will combine with the structure from balanced minerals to give the soil that great smelling, moisture and nutrient holding aggregate structure that we all would love to have.<\/p>\n<p>Moisture can also be held by providing dust mulch covers which act as insulators against evaporation, but still allow the all important oxygen to penetrate for the microbes to breath.\u00a0\u00a0Very light tillage can be used to create the dust mulch cover without turning up moist soil.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s assume we have managed to get rain to go into our subsoil by breaking up hardpans and creating better topsoil.\u00a0\u00a0The sun on the soil surface will create a draw that will bring the moisture toward the surface.\u00a0\u00a0The more pathways for the moisture to travel the more that will come up to the root zone.\u00a0\u00a0Typical pathways include wormholes, openings and cracks created by sub-soiling, spaces created by soil conditioners, deep root paths, etc.<\/p>\n<p>To assure that new plant roots can reach downward as far as possible, build an implement with a deep thin blade that can create a channel under each row.\u00a0\u00a0Late in the season, go out with a shovel and prove to yourself how far roots can go down that channel compared to roots that don\u2019t find the path of least resistance.<\/p>\n<p>The author has been observing farms for thirty years in the US and many foreign countries.\u00a0\u00a0Whenever there is a drought in a given area, the farms that have practiced the principles of sustainable agriculture always come out better.\u00a0\u00a0They may have a reduced yield, but in relation to their neighbors, they get a better yield.\u00a0\u00a0One of the reasons for this, besides the moisture management we have mentioned above, is that their crops and soil attract dew to a much greater extent than their neighbors.\u00a0\u00a0This has to do with a very complex relationship involving the electrical\/magnetic nature of plants and soil.<\/p>\n<p>It takes 2-3 years to restore structure and biological activity.\u00a0\u00a0Get started now!\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Philip A. Wheeler, Ph.D. The first point to make is that it is easier to prepare for drought before you are in one than to try to rescue yourself from one your already experiencing.\u00a0\u00a0Regardless of what stage your in the principles which will be addressed here are the same. Three processes are involved: Capturing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-by-dr-phil-wheeler"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Sustainable Methods For Dealing With Drought - CSI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/csi0926.cldo.com\/?p=466\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sustainable Methods For Dealing With Drought - CSI\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Philip A. 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