Activities on the farm the last couple of months have been busy with two main activities – sowing a winter seed mix, and spraying lantana whilst it is flowering.

Bare soil is the antithesis of regenerative farming. The sun beats down onto bare soil, drying it out, heating it up, and generally messing up soil microbiome processes. Rain also impacts the surface in a way that doesn’t occur on covered soil, and soil erosion is more likely to occur. Weeds take hold. The lack of living plants also means the soil microbiome isn’t being fed.

Anyone who has done biology would know about photosynthesis; it is via photosynthesis that plants produce energy to live and grow from light, CO2 and water.

From this energy, plants produce everything you see above ground – the leaves, branches and trunk, and also what is below ground – the roots. What is not well known and recognised, is that a good proportion of the energy from photosynthesis goes into root exudates. These are sugars and other compounds (eg. amino acids) that the root exude out (puts into) the soil, to feed the bacteria and life surrounding the roots. Between 20% and 60% of energy created by photosynthesis, depending on the type of plant and its environment (grasses are one of the more generous contributors), can be given out by the plant to its environment in the form of root exudates!

What does this have to do with my farm? I have plenty of bare, or semi-bare, soil – the areas on the eastern paddock and western ledges that were planted to sorghum over a year ago are only thinly covered, as well as various stick raked areas. Without leaves collecting sunlight and creating energy via photosynthesis (think solar panels we put on house roofs), the soil is running an energy deficit just to keep the bacteria, fungi and various critters alive. They’ll actually be using up carbon in the soil to keep life going, the opposite of what we want (we want to see soil organic matter increasing). So, rather than see the soil degrade over winter, I’m planting a mixed winter crop to cover the ground, protect it and inject further life into it.

In practise this is what I’m planting:

• Winter Mix
  • Grazing Oats
  • Field Pea
  • Awnless Barley
  • Ryecorn
  • Annual Rye Grass
  • Triticale
  • Propany Vetch
  • Forage Brassica
  • Safflower
  • Tillage Radish

I also wanted linseed, but my supplier ran out…. About 500kg of seed all up, which is now almost all planted. The largest portion of it was done on the eastern ledge (I need to produce a labelled map!) over the long weekend ending 3rd May. This is what that area looked like recently:

You’ll note in the above photos that I haven’t tilled/ploughed the soil, which is the ‘normal’ way to plant seeds such as this. I’m using a double disc opener no-till drill, which I part made myself and part purchased. Will describe that in another post….

Saturday just gone I was doing something a little different. Up on the plateau, near the back where lantana bushes were thickening up, I ran the tractor bucket along the ground (or just above) and scrapped off some of the lantana (the larger the lantana the more effective) whilst seeding directly into the soil behind the tractor (with the no-till drill) as I went. Trialling it to see what happens – probably did an acre or two:

I don’t actually plan on doing anything with this winter crop just planted – will likely let it go to seed and die! It will have put plenty into the soil whilst growing, and then will provide a nice mulch once dead – something more for the soil life to feed on. Come spring I’ll perhaps just flatten it and seed a long term perennial pasture mix (perhaps with some summer crops mixed in) directly into the residue, or if the lantana is shooting and looking menacing, mow it first and then seed. As this is a good flat rock free area (quick and easy to run the tractor over) I’m hoping to control and eventually kill off the lantana using this technique, rather than herbicides.

Areas seeded are the eastern paddock, the western ledge, a few parts of the plateau, the western plateau, lots of the northern slope and some of the west slope. I’ll add a labelled map to this once I’ve got around to creating it…. (see here)

Btw, If you ever need anything undone on your tractor you just need to enlist the help of lantana. It will undo anything – lynch pins, hitch pins, hair/R cotter pins – doesn’t matter it will get it off. Realised Sunday morning that the tow bar was missing from the tractor – found in in the lantana reside…. That’s no lightweight tow bar – its a 30mm pin that was removed for this to come off…. A week ago I had the seeder practically fall off the 3 point hitch, thanks to 2 lynch pins (with strong clips) being ‘picked’ by lantana, never to be seen again…

Finally, here’s a nice photo to finish the post. I usually go up the plateau Saturday evening around sunset, just to take in the view and relax from the stresses of a week at work. How could looking at views like this not help? This is actually from Sunday morning, so a bit different from the usual. That’s the Buyna Mountains that can be seen in the distance.