Bring Your Own Soil to Determine Soil Texture
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EmailFebruary 25, 2025
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Soil health is so important to grow healthy crops but can be the most challenging aspect of farming. Soil tests are important to know how many nutrients are in the soil and what to add. But soil texture is also very critical to good soil management. Soil texture is the amount of sand, silt and clay in your soil. This impacts how well it holds water and drains, how it supports root growth, and even how easily you can increase the soil’s organic matter. Considering the results of these 2 tests will help you to know what can be done to improve the soil. If you are able to have a clear jar and a clump of your soil with you as you participate in this webinar, you can follow along to do your own soil texture test. As it is winter now and may be a little difficult to get a clump of soil from your field, you can also sit back and watch so you can do this yourself in the spring when the soil thaws. We will show how you can identify the soil’s texture and talk about the important points to consider on a soil test results that can help to improve the soil.
The 2025 MI Ag Ideas to Grow With conference was held virtually, February 24 - March 7, 2024. This two-week program encompassed many aspects of the agricultural industry and offered a full array of educational sessions for farmers and homeowners interested in food production and other agricultural endeavors. More information can be found at: https://www.canr.msu.edu/miagideas/
Video Transcript
Welcome. This is the next session of the MI Ag Ideas to Grow with Virtual Conference. My name is Mariel Borgman, and I'm an educator with MSU Extension. And in a minute, I'm going to turn it over to our speaker, Vicki Morrone to talk to us all about soil. But before we get started, I just want to start out with a couple of reminders. I want to thank our sponsor that has put forward a great, generous donation to allow us to put on this conference. Thank you to AgriStrategies, LLC. Then we have a couple of other slides in here that I'll share at the end about farm stress resources and some beginning farmer feedback opportunities. But before we do that, I want to get us into the main part of today's presentation. I'll turn it over to Vicki. I'm going to go ahead and stop my share and turn it over to Vicki. I'm Vicki Mirrone. I'm at Michigan State University, and I'm in the Department of Community Sustainability. I work with organic farmers and farmers focusing on soil health here in Michigan, as well as in Southeast Africa, Malawi, primarily. So this afternoon, I'm going to share with you a nice, user friendly, informative approach to try to understand your soil a little better. And it gives you kind of food for thought. And it's all about soil texture. So I asked if you could bring your soil with you, and that would probably be only if you were able to collect it or had it sitting around from prior to our Arctic freeze we've had this year. It's been quite cold here in lower central Michigan and presumably throughout Michigan. So let's get started. And as you see from the photo, soil texture, and you think, well, what is texture? What is soil texture? It's important to know because it helps you manage your crops given the soil texture. You say, Well, why don't I just adjust it? Well, you can. Mother Nature has given us our texture. We're dealt this hand, and we have to work with it. And it's composed of sand, silt, and clay and usually a mixture of all three, a little bit of both, different percentages, depending on which field you walk in, even which quarter of your garden sometimes. Michigan is like during the glacial time, I call it kind of a porta potty of soil textures. There's so many textured soils, different textures in one field. If you go to a farmers field and you look around after a snow melt or heavy rainfall, and look at the four corners, you'll see different amounts of water because of the texture. Sandy soil, like a beach, it does not hold water. It drains quickly. Silty soil holds some water and can drain pretty well. And clay soil drains very slowly. Think about the modeling clay that you've worked with, or if you've played with Play Doh when you were a child and you put water in it, it held. Well, maybe not forever, but for a long time. And so think about that in a field. If you have a lot of clay, that means after heavy rain, after snow melt, it takes a long time for the soil to dry out so that you can plant it or work it. And so we have to consider what is our soil in our field? What is our soil in our garden? If you have loam, it's golden. Loam is just a little bit of clay, about 20% and about 40% silt and 40% sand. So it's like the perfect marriage of textures. If you can get a loam soil, jump on it. It is wonderful. So after today, I hope you can determine if you have a loam soil. And why do we care? Well, soil texture and weather can create challenging farming. Up in the upper left, we have phosphorus deficient corn, and you see it's a soil that's cracking, it's very dry. If water is limited, what else is limited? Think about it. What do you add to the soil for plant health? And if soil is very fine, like you see in the bottom left, What are the implications there? Good heavy rain, bye bye soil. So if you have a sloped garden, you should take care and plant across the slope. That's what they say, contour farming. So you're planting across so your plants are kind of acting as a wedge to hold that soil. And then if your soil is heavy clay, it cracks. And things like beans have a really difficult time germinating in a clay soil because of these cracks, fissures or splits in the soil. I call it brownie soil. That's what it reminds me of when it's dry. And it's not good like brownies. It cracks and it makes it really difficult for that little leaf to pop up for germination. And then in the upper right, you see lots of oops, sorry, lots of clay. And that's when we dig down a trench in the soil, we call it the horizons. And this is a very large horizon of clay. This is a very big challenge, and I hear some people have that challenge. So we're going to talk about some approaches you can use to minimize those impacts, not change it, but minimize those impacts. So I promised that we do do yourself soil texture. And if can I ask in the chat, how many people have ever done a soil test on the land where they're growing, whether it's a garden or a field or a quarter of a field? Anybody? So if you take a look at your soil tests, typically, soil texture is not included. It's an expensive test, and it's so easy for you to do yourself. And that's what we're going to do today. Wow, Eric tested grids every year. So what that means is they have a large field and they score it, and then they test across the grid the intersections of the grid so that they have a true representation. As I said, Michigan soils, especially Michigan soils, have a large variety of differences. And they check for some check for nutrients, as well as for But for nutrients. I'm not sure what else you check your soil for, unless you're checking it for soil health. That may be the microbes like nematodes, beneficial nematodes, obviously. So let's go ahead and get started. You do check for nematodes. Good for you. Those little guys they're microscopic, but boy, can they do havoc. So we have hopefully you have, is anybody doing this, or are we just going to do a demonstration? I'm looking I don't see anybody. Okay. It doesn't look like. Yeah. So here I have a jar. I have a mason jar, and I filled it with soil. Now, I have to admit, this is a soil from a plant that is no longer with us. May she rest in peace. But it was only soil that was not frozen. And it's a mixture of garden soil, as well as potting mix. And so when you have a soil like this in a jar, you want to break it up. If there's any lumps, break it up. If you find pieces of sticks, take them out or little rocks, just like you would for a soil sample when you're setting it in same principle. And then once it's all broken up, you feel content that it's done its thing, that you've done your thing. You can proceed to, there we go. It feels good. No more lumps, not too many. I found a rock. Throw that away. All right. Okay, so no twigs, no stones, no really hard lumps, big lumps. Okay. There. There, I have my soil ready to pour the water in, and then I just fill it with water. There we go. And then I add a couple of drops of dishwashing soap, like two drops, and it's just a surfactant to break up to help break up the clumps. Put a lid on, make sure it's on good and tight because you don't want a mess, especially if you're in front of my computer, I would cry. Good and tight, and then you shake, and you want to turn it over, making sure that everybody goes from the top to the bottom and the bottom to the top, and you do this for about 5 minutes and you shake. And I guess we should figure out a song that you can sing that takes 5 minutes. I don't know anybody have a song that it takes about 5 minutes and you don't want me to sing, trust me. So I just shake and watch my clock. I'm turning it over, making sure it's all mixed up. And then after you've done your 5 minutes, it's like a cooking show. I have a jar prepared already, you let it sit. So you see it's not transparent. You can't see any layers. And that's our goal is to see layers of different soil textures. And so we would then set it aside where it's not going to get bothered for a couple of hours, at least. I mean, you can even do it overnight, which is what I did. And then you have your layers. And this is from the same source of soil, but you can see how they've separated, and there's just mostly pearlite. If anybody's familiar with potting soil, pearlite are those white crunchy things that they put in soil mix. So they're very light, so it's to the top. It floats to the top. But I have a flashlight, and I hope you can see it. It helps a little bit. All right, there you can see a layer here. Another layer here. And we only see two layers. So remember the three layers could be sand, silt, and clay. And why do you think I'm saying it in that order? Sand, silt, and clay. Think of the size of the granules of sand versus clay. Sand is the largest, silt is the medium size, and clay is the smallest. So clay would be on the bottom. And because there's less air to allow it to float, right, between the particles. So we don't have a bottom layer. We have we have here, we have silt, and then we have sand. So we want to measure it. And you need a ruler or a tape measure. I love my tape measure. So I've got that here. So I'm going to measure my silt, which is quite large, and my sand is quite small. So I have in inches, I have one and a quarter, 1.25 inches of silt, and then I have an eighth of an inch of sand. So with that, you can see how this is very similar to what I've got. I've got sand here, and I've got the silt here, but I don't have the clay. And. So let's go here. And I said in reverse order. God bless dyslexia. I'm sorry. Sand, silt, and clay. So we don't have clay. We have sand and silt, okay? And really very similar measurements as we see here. It was just a fluke. So first, you take the total height of the solids. So I want everything, and I'm going to grab a piece of paper. And my total measurement on my jar is from the top to bottom of the solids is 1.5 inches, 1.5 total. And then I said the clay is an eighth of an inch That's the top layer and the middle layer is the silt and that was an inch and a quarter. There we go. Okay. Now, I put for my total height dear, I can't do that. I'll have to do it this way. For my total height, I have 1.5 inches. For my clay, I have .12 which is a quarter inch, right? Is that right? No, 0.25, Vicky. Come on. 0.25. And then silt, I have 1.25. There we go. And you can see 1.25 plus 0.25 equals the total height of 1.5, and this is obviously zero. So now I want to know the percentage. So we know that the clay is an eighth, is that right? Is that right, Mariel? One eighth? Oh, my gosh, I'm getting crazy. And this is so one eighth or 20% 20%, yeah. Of the total, and this would be 80% 80%. So we have 80% silt silt and 20% clay. Now, we go to our lovely diagram here. And we can go back to this. Okay. So what we do is you see on the bottom and on the sides are numbers. Those are percentages. Percentage of silt is on the right, percentage of clay is on the left, percentage of sand is on the bottom. So first, we have clay. We want a 80%. Wait a minute, 20% clay. So we're here, and we want 80% of the silt. Sorry. Go over here, and we have 0% clay. So we go all the way over here. So you see there's 0% clay, 80% silt, and 20% clay right here. So we have a silt loam soil. That's how that is determined. And that kind of gives you it helps you if you're, for example, not only realizing silt loam. Remember we said silt was the medium texture, and loam is the cream of the crop. So we'll have great drainage. And what else besides water are we concerned about our plants having access to? You're welcome to, they can open their mic, Mariel, on this. Yep. Just have to unmute yourself. Feel free to open your mic and just shout it out. What else besides water are we concerned for our plants? Shy group. Sunlight, air. Sunlight, air and nutrients, right? Nutrients. We want our roots to be able to access the nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, and all the micronutrients that we have that are in the soil. And that can come from many different things, not just a bag of fertilizer. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But this is important to know that you have a good chance to grow beans without a problem because there's not that clay. They'll germinate easily. It means that during a drought, there's some organic matter to hold the water and the nutrients so that your plants can thrive. So you're in good shape here. And this is called the soil triangle. And you can just Google that and find it, or I can put that in the maybe Mariel can look up soil triangle and throw that link in the chat because it's a handy tool to have. So I mentioned you can't change your texture, right? It's a given. It's as Mother Nature has dealt you. So what you can do is add inputs to help improve the plant growth. And there are kind of three organic ways to do this. And truthfully, conventional ways it's just nutrients, right? Nutrients that you'd add, and that doesn't affect how it affects how fast the plant can grow, but it doesn't necessarily help the soil either hold onto the nutrients and water or drain the nutrients and water and make nutrients accessible. So we're trying to change the physical characteristics of the soil as much as possible. Remember, soil is built on three principles, right? Physical, like the structure, biological, like the nematodes that you mentioned that you test for, and chemical, that's the NPK. The NPK comes from potassium phosphate, urea, compost, manure, various other organic inputs like leaf mold or biochar or any of these other inputs that are organically produced, but slower, but they have multiple benefits. And that's what I'm focusing on here are the ones that offer multiple benefits beyond nutrients. So you have Crop rotation, which means you grow different types of crops or plants in that row each year. So, for example, we have families of plants, right? Like we have tomatoes, and then we have onions. Onions are the alium family, and tomatoes are in the Solanaceae family. So you want to rotate families, you know, so that there's not family feuds, if you will. So each year you grow a different family in that row, and not only for disease sake and insect sake, but roots. Roots are different on every plant. And we'll take a look at some roots in a minute. I've got a nice diagram of how varying roots can be across the thing. But not only that, if you grow beans, common beans, soybeans, any other legume, then it provides a little bit of nitrogen, too. And then you have soil amendments like compost, leaves, manure or used animal bedding. And compost can be commercially purchased or made yourself. And try to read labels if you do purchase commercially, because sadly, there are businesses that take advantage of people trying to use biological inputs. Leaves are great except for black walnut leaves. Manure is good, and we'll look at a chart in a minute of how much or how much nitrogen in each type of animal. And then used animal bedding like straw or wood chips mixed with manure from their bedding. And then also you can grow plants called cover crops. Cover crops, I'm passionate about cover crops. I just think they're challenging in the northern areas like Michigan because you need a window of opportunity. Meaning, in between your plants where you're trying to either make money or food or both, then you have to find a window when you're not growing food, but you're going to be growing something specifically just for the soil. And examples of really nice cover crops are clovers, they fix nitrogen. Oats are winter killed, which is a nice thing if you want to manage your field organically, because they are winter killed, you don't need any pesticide to kill them in the spring, and you also don't have to worry about them either mowing them or using energy in your time to mow down in the spring. They end up producing a nice mulch over the winter, helping with erosion and adding to the soil, feeding the soil. Buckwheat is your summertime helper. It can produce a decent what we call biomass. That's the amount of plant growth in just three, four weeks. So you, all cover crops you want to cut down or terminate, they say, mow it, put chemical herbicide on it, however you're doing it, but do it before they're about 20% flowering because after flowering, what happens? It produces seed. And if you don't want that buckwheat to continue growing forever, you want to cut it before it produces a seed. And so you've got cover crops, soil amendments, and crop rotation as your assistance to build your soil. And build your soil will not change your texture, but it will improve it so that it's, um, better for the crop support. And if you notice this fact sheet, Mariel has put this in your chat. It's an extension bulletin I've created a while ago, but it's just how to build your soil, and it's meant for beginner farmers. I've given a lot of definitions. We hear all these definitions thrown at us during workshops and in books, and I've tried to define them in simple terms so to make it a little less intimidating and give you courage to find good ways to build your soil. So I mentioned animal manure. Well, animal manure, there's different animals. And with every different animal, you get a little different NPK. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. All important. Those are the macronutrients, they call them. They call them macro because your plants need more of that than the micronutrients. So NPK, and you'll see that on all the chemical fertilizer bags. So you want if you are looking for the most nitrogen of all animal manure, if you have access to rabbit that's a good thing. If you are concerned about phosphorus, which in our Great Lakes state, we really take it to heart to be aware of how much phosphorus are you putting in your soil because if you put too much for the plants to take up, what happens? It leeches. It's gone into the groundwater, eventually into the Great Lakes. And so with that, if you're concerned about phosphorus, based on your soil test that you received, if you have high phosphorus, you probably want to shy away from chicken manure, because you see it's the highest of all the phosphorus. Now, for potassium, if you remember that photo I showed of the corn, corn is the most perfect plant to be the indicator of nutrient deficiency, that purple is so easy to see, whether it's a small plant or even a more mature plant. And if you are, deficit in potassium, if you can get ahold of some sheep manure, you're doing you'll really do well. But remember, all organic inputs like manures, like compost, don't offer the nutrients all at once like a urea. It's a little bit the first year and a little bit more in the second year. So take that to heart when you're planning your soil management plan. And that's another reason why it's nice to be able to put manure on in the fall and turn it in, like, after your harvests are all done. And then turn it in and then plant your cover crop. And then you've got your manure breaking down little by little, helping your cover crop establish, which is good because the more biomass, the more plant material you get growing, the more it helps the soil. The more it's contributing that carbon and nitrogen. And then, of course, adding manure in the fall, Mariel will smile with this. It's a food safety thing. You don't want to be applying fresh manure to any plants that are sitting in your garden growing with fruit or flowers because it's a food safety risk. So when you're going to include things like yard waste, quote unquote, for faster composting, add leaf mold instead of freshly fallen leaves. Those are that's leaves that have started to break down. You know, it's when you like that round to it is sitting in your pocket in the fall and you haven't quite gotten there to rake everything and the leaves start to rot, perfect for the compost. And then grass clippings. Grass clippings are a great source if you have the energy to rake them or maybe you have a grass catcher on your mower, but do not use grass clippings if they've been sprayed with pesticides, especially herbicides, killing weeds, because a lot of herbicides kill more than just weeds. They kill plants. And when including tree trimmings, you know, like you've pruned the fruit trees or you've picked up the branches from all our winds that we've had this winter, This, you can see on the left, are pretty large pieces of twigs. They'll break down, but it's slow. Whereas if you can manage to put it in a chipper or get it chipped somehow, or some townships offer free chips. That's the perfect venue. The use them. But I put a question mark there, meaning you can do a compost with a larger pieces like this, but maybe up the nitrogen. And that's things like the green stuff. And The chips, when you do use chips, it should come from untreated lumber. Don't use treated lumber because of the chemicals. And then if you have a heap of chips, you're going to use into your compost, store them where chemicals are not used, and be careful not to use black walnuts because black walnut trees typically don't allow any other plants to grow. They're solo growers. But compost, when you're making your own compost, you want a combination of brown and green, right? So about 30% carbon, 70% nitrogen, and they made it nice here. This little icon is green, just like nitrogen inputs, whether that be grass clippings or fruit scraps or kitchen waste or trimming prodings from your plants. And then also manure. Manure is one of the exception that is not green, but it is definitely a nitrogen, good nitrogen source. Carbon is like your dry leaves, sawdust and ripped up cardboard. Just like twigs, you want to rip up the cardboard if you want it to break down fast. If you don't care how long it takes, that's fine. If you want to you don't have a chipper, you can up your nitrogen a little bit so that those microbes have you have more microbes going at it and they're more hungry. It's kind of like running the marathon instead of taking a walk around the block. You up the nitrogen and then they'll start working a little more and you'll have a higher population of microbes. So as you see here, brown is carbon, and so you want 30% carbon, and green is nitrogen, and then you have various sources, even your legumes like your clovers. So you mix your 30 parts of brown with your one part of green with water, and you churn it. And somebody shouted out air exactly why you churn it, not only to get the whole pile heated, but to incorporate some air into your compost. And when you can barely detect that those were plants at one time, your compost is ready. And you can see these two. They're both YouTubes. This one on the left is just a person explaining it really simply repeating kind of what I did, what I said, if you'd like to hear that, or it's about a three minute explanation. This one's a little longer, but they're showing you what they're using. They're taking ingredients from their farm vegetable gardens to show you what they have added to their compost and how they've done it. So these are those roots I was telling you about. Why do we care about diversity of crops? Not only for the above ground, the biomass, the green stuff, but for their roots. Every root has a different shape or architecture so that you can then on it for finding nutrients in different places, for holding onto soil better, deeper and wider, just depending on the root architecture. And that really helps your soil stay in place, reduces erosion, holds onto water and nutrients, and creates poor space for your air. And you see radishes. These are the wimpiest dicot radish I've ever seen. But these guys can get as long as this whole column. I mean, they can be tremendous for clay soil so that you can build, improve your porosity of your soil. Okay. So this whole thing of crop diversity, of fruit diversity, of adding different inputs, it's all about feeding the soil food web. And is it as blurry for you as it is for me? Oh, dear. It didn't look like that before. No, it is. Well, Mariel maybe you can grab a soil food web link because it's a really nice diagram that's used by NRCS, by a lot of universities, by a lot of farmers, by a lot of beginning farmer groups, just to explain the whole ecosystem. You have plants, which is what we're trying to grow. We have nematodes. We have good nematodes, and we have bad nematodes. When I say good, I mean that they are actually beneficial. They will trap there's nematode trapping nematodes. They look like little cowboys with their lassos. And then there's nematodes that are parasites to the other nematodes, arthropods, and these guys will help break down the organic matter in your soil, as well as the nematodes, as well as worms. Even protozoa and fungi will help break things down so that it's turning into soil. I mean, think it takes thousands of years for soil to be made. So we're trying to help it along by creating the best combination possible. And with that, I would like to have discussion and questions. I have a question if no one else is jumping in. Yep. I recently purchased some land, so I haven't had a chance to do any testing myself. But prior to making the purchase, I was looking at public records for, like, the soil composition. And I was trying to figure out what so I have Lomi and for most of my parcel, but it says Spinks loam and, and I'm wondering what the spinks what that would mean. Oh. Huh. I can, I'll keep googling. Oh, that's interesting. I don't know that one either. I'm not a soil chemist, and that's okay, so it's called a series. It consists of very deep, well drained soils formed in sandy, soil or outwashed material. Oh, that's good. They are on dunes, moraines. So it's like what we call alluvial soil soil that is moved by water, and it often carries a lot of nutrients. So it sounds like it's a it's you said loamy sand, right? I would say loamy sand plus plus. So it's got a little more sand than the loam typically does, which so you've got better drainage, right? You'll have better drainage than loam, so maybe to a fault sometimes in a drought. But if it it's but it's well drained soils with yeah with sand. So it's got more sand than the typical your typical loam soils have. And so, like I said, just be cautious that it doesn't dry out. So if you can afford to have some sort of irrigation and drip tape is your best bet or if you can't afford drip tape, start out with a soaker hoses, teed together with connectors. And I love timers. I mean, you can buy a timer quite cheap so that you don't end up flooding your plants or forgetting to turn it on because it was Saturday and you ran to the farmers market and you forgot all about it. It's too hot now. But so it's a very well drained loamy soil. Does that help? Yeah. Thank you. All right. How about other folks? Anybody else have a question or I didn't see a question, but I wanted to just chime in that there is a small scale drip irrigation design and planning session as part of this conference on March 7, so I'm going to put the link to that for those who might be interested since that just came up. But Lucy was asking in the chat if anybody is using biochar in their soil. Oh, I'd love to hear. I'm a skeptic of biochar, but I think it's to be determined, and I think it depends on your soil type. I think some soil types will respond better to its input than others, as I keep reading on it because I keep hearing farmers being very, especially organic farmers, and I work with organic farmers, very excited about it. But It's my challenge is it depends on what it's made of, right? Just like manure, it depends on which animal it comes from and how old it is. Just biochar depends on what was it made from? Was it made from cornstalks compressed, or is it made from a hard tree that could really withstand time? And that's the factor is, like, biochar is considered something that doesn't break down but feeds the nutrients and holds on it reduces leeching and losses of nutrients. So how are you going to put that on your whole field is my question. You know, I mean, is it affordable to put onto an entire field? Um If it holds nutrients, that's great and makes them available little by little by little as the roots come in contact with it and the microbes break it down to access it. So it's sort of like a piggy bank for your nutrients is how I've interpreted it. What do you think you've asked the question. What do you think of it? What are your questions about it or what is your first impression of biochar? We use, this is Lucy. We, I've never used it, and I was looking at it because right now we've used chicken manure and I rotate my crops every year, but there seems to be, I have a clay loam. So, you know, I got to be careful what I put in there because it doesn't always break down the way it was supposed to. And I'm just wondering if the bio char would help release it more slowly instead of fast or whatever. I'm I'm not sure. I would just somebody had brought it up and I thought, I might as well check into this. Sure. Sure. So you want to reduce your leaching. And so you've got your clay soil, so you also want to increase your drainage. Do you have problems with big puddles, like as the snow is melting here. I don't know if it's melting your home, but there's huge puddles of water. It looks like little lakes all around. We yeah. We did, but over the years, because when I have my I have my grandparents property. My dad farmed on it, and I'm the third generation farming on it, and it was solid clay at one time. And we used to go out there and just take gobs of it and make things up by putting the sun and, you know, we have our own little, you know, stuff as that goes. Now it's a whole lot better. I mean, it's no longer red. It is now a more brown, which is really, really nice. But we still have some spots where the water puddles and doesn't drain the way it's supposed to. And that oil seed radish or dicot radish is a perfect cover crop for that because I showed you the picture. I said, those are the wimpiest dicot I've ever seen. There will grow 2 ", 3 " wide in diameter, and a foot to foot and a half long. If and just note that you've got to plant them you can't plant them late fall, but, like, the 1st of August to get their maximum growth because they typically will winter kill, especially winters like this so that you want them to do their job before they are killed by the winter. So like first to the middle part of August is ideal for an oil seed radish for a heavy soil. Really good for a heavy soil to break it up. Okay. Also another wonderful cover crop that's called sudex or sorghum Sudan grass. So it's a combination. It's cross between sorghum and Sudan grass. It is not a GMO. It's just an old fashioned cross that tillers like corn. You know, when corn puts out the little extra feet, well, that's what sorghum Sudan grass does. And if you have animals, you can feed it to animals once it's after it's about after 18 " two feet high, and you can cut it several times. So if you have a piece of land that you've just purchased and aren't ready to grow on yet, get a cover crop on and think about your soil texture of what you need to help with your soil, whether it's a heavy soil, you may do something like a dicot radish. If it's a soil that's really deficit in nutrients, you might plant a clover mixed with oats or rye. Rye does overwinter. Oats do not. And so there's different cover crops for different purposes and different values. But no cover crop is bad for any soil. So Vicki, do you have any cover crop resources that you can think of off the top of your head that I could link for folks? Yes. Cover crops profitably by SARE. It's an excellent book that's free to download as a pdf. sare.org. It's a USDA cover crops growing cover crops profitably. It's an excellent resource has easy to follow tables. It has nice case scenarios of farmers under different circumstances of using cover crops and how they've managed, whether it be in North Dakota or Michigan or Nevada. So they have something for all across the US. So, Susanne, you said it was very expensive and you're hoping this year to see the difference. Well, that would be great to hear because that's what we need. Our farmers taking the leap and giving it a whirl. So for those who are of experimental minds, maybe you can take a look at sare.org. They have a thing called Farmer Rancher grant. Right now, everything's on a pause. There are no call for grants. But let's pray that everything works out so that we can continue our important ag work through USDA as well as other organizations. But if you have a group of farmers working together, That would be an excellent thing to do as a group. One person tries biochar, one person tries a cover crop, and one person just tries compost. And then compare, see how it does. And I would do that for a couple of years before you make the conclusion. But I Yeah. I think biochar will depend on your soil soil type, soil texture. Yeah. So Kristen mentions that MSU has a biochar research going on in apples up at Old Mission. It's a sandy loam soil. So, you know, that would be like like Lucy mentioned, she was looking for something to hold on to those nutrients. So with sand, you get a lot of leaching. So that might be a good test so we can stay tuned to see what the results are of that. And Sam says he's a top coordinator. He's going to be discussing the NRCS practices tomorrow at noon, if anybody is interested in hearing about that. It's a little dicey right now because we don't know what's going to happen, but we hope that those resources like the cost share, the EQIP, all those wonderful resources, the transition for organic farmers, there's special cost share for those farmers as well. And if you have any questions in the future, I didn't even put my email on there. Mariel could put my email in the chat for me, please. She knows it all by heart. Mariel and I are co-PI on the beginner Farmer Rancher grant that is developing beginner farmer curricula. And if you're a group of farmers or if you have a program with farmers, it might be something you might be interested in now or down the road. We're just getting final testing by educators and teachers and farmers. And so it'll be all ready to go in June. And you can send me an email if you're interested in receiving the QR code for that so that you can take a look and see if it's something you might want to use. A lot of hands on, a lot of activities, including this one with the soil texture, and the idea is to make it co learning, peer to peer, interactive. Get out, dig a hole, look at the soil, talk about it together, share each other's knowledge, and grow from there. So that's all I have for you. And if there's no more questions, last call, thanks to those who shared and we hope that we can continue providing you with more information and learn from you too. I mean, that's kind of why I was asking you want to share about the soil test, but, you know, sometimes it's like, well, I haven't looked at it in three months, so I can't remember. I know that feeling. Oh, too. I do have a question. We had quite the year last year on our pumpkin farm. Boy, I could go through the list. It seemed like the plague, we got everything. One of the main things I'm worried about this year is plectosporium blight. We brought many plants up to MSU. We had powdery mildew, angular leaf spot, boring caterpillar, cucumber beetles, the gamut. What cover crop would you suggest we could throw in come spring because we've been told we're going to have trouble planting in certain areas that we had this difficulty. So how many years did they suggest you to rotate out of pumpkin in those areas pumpkin there? It's two to three years they're suggesting. Yeah. And that's that's typical. And so if look at your soil test and see what nutrients your soil may need and consider any other physical aspects, drainage, hard pan, crusting, clay? We have we have real good soil. We we have really good soil. So that's not the issue. But we, have you rotated in the past with your pumpkins? We are new to this, so we are learning. We inherited some land, so we are learning. So this MSU extension is fabulous. We work with Ben quite a bit, but yes. That's a good. We thank you for your time because this is very helpful to many of us new farmers. Good. Well, I'm glad to hear. That's really good feedback. Thank you. Yeah. So that's the trick is, like, when you get a market, like for pumpkins, I mean, Michigan's famous for pumpkins. You just want to be able to grow it every year because you've established your market. But in the best of the world, it's like, at least divide your field in half and grow pumpkins on the left half one year and the following year on the right half, and then grow non family members. So not a let's see, what is that? Cucurbit. So no cucumbers, no squashes, no pumpkins. Not yeah. And then so maybe like peppers or tomatoes or um even strawberries for a couple of years, but you need to rotate out. So in terms of what to grow on your field, and you have really good soil, the drainage is an issue, but nutrients are always an issue. So if you're going to put it into long term two, three years, you can even consider something like an alfalfa and keep cutting it. And then it'll continue to grow. Or you could plant some clover mixed with a rye, and the clover will provide nitrogen. A white clover really has good biomass. Farmers who are only for one year don't like it because it can get bit wild. But if you can both the rye and the white clover can be mowed and then use as a mulch, making compost or animal feed, and then you can it'll grow back. As long as you know you know about growing point, you know, how you don't cut things too short because you cut off the growing point. You don't mow. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So as long as you don't mow your rye too low. But also rye will produce seed and you can let it reseed itself for the second year. And then when we go back into planting, we should cut it before seed, correct? Exactly. Exactly. Got you. Yep. Got you. Yep. Thank you. Good information. Thank you. Okay. I might add, we thought pumpkins would be easy to grow, and they are the furthest thing from easy to grow. The deer will give you the stamp of approval? Yes. Yeah. Now, we have a pumpkin farm up the hill, and they have fenced it completely, and it's about ten acres with electric fence. 3D electric fence because the deer are so bad. Yeah. So yeah. And then of course, you've got the diseases to contend with. So your do you have a sandier soil? I have a silty loam and its, oh nice. Yeah. That we put up we put up that farm fencing with the posts and such. And that kept the deer out, kept the small rodents out, but slugs were big for us. So we used some sand around there's somebody around our area that does giant pumpkins, so we got some help from them. Do you ever try? It was a challenging year. Yeah. Have you ever tried diatomaceous earth? Yes. Yes. Would that work too. Yeah. And that diatomaceous earth is like a little silica, for those who aren't familiar with it, and it cuts the bodies of the little slugs, which sounds cruel, which is, but I don't know. It's the trade off, your livelihood or the life of a slug. Yeah. Mariel had a time with slugs last year too. There was a lot of was a new organic slug bait that's supposed to be pretty effective. I think it's called slugo or or something really original. But the testing has shown positive. Yeah, we use that. It initially draws them in, but it did great. We did and diatomaceous earth. Am I saying that right? And sluggo. So yes, we use all three of them. That's good. That's IPM at its peak. It's great. And some people use budweiser traps and they saw the kids out there slurping. That does work. We even tried that. Yep. Yep. Yep. All right. Well, I think we're we've talked out our questions, and feel free to email me if you have a question. Happy to help. And all the very best to this season. May the weather be with us! Take care, everybody. Thanks so much, Vicki, and hope to see the rest of you at some of our other sessions this week and next.