Cover Crops & Biological Farming
Cover Crops
Introduction
A cover crop should be tailored to your soil type, equipment and not create a weed in your rotation. Our mixtures will maximise the soil carbon legacy (humus potential) of your cover crop as a result of the correct species choice combined with the knowledge of how to harness biology in efficiently recycling the residue.
Why? To reduce your bagged fertiliser bill and not feed your crop from ‘fast food’. The concept involves correctly chosen plants to scavenge otherwise unavailable nutrients, that cereals struggle to achieve, while propagating microbes and worms to turn that nutrient bonanza into your next cash crop
Increasing your Soil Organic Matter will save you money on inputs and increase the quality of your produce. It’s that simple. It can only be done by protection and propagation of soil microbes.
When Soil Organic Matter falls below 2%, there is little biological life and production falls below economic viability. It is now commonly muted that there are as little as 50 rotations left on most land. We can help you ensure that is not your legacy.
Several easy adjustments to farming practices can start you on that path. We can show you how, this is true sustainability.
Why Dods Cover Crops
- We use a very specific ratios of certain families and species of plants tailored to you rotation, soil parameters and soil type. What suits you will not suit your neighbour.
- Synergies within bespoke mixtures are harnessed to benefit the following crop.
- Just another cost to the business? Far from it!!
- Cover Cropping is so much more than just a subsidy option.
- Nutrient retention and scavenging, reduce leaching but most of all,
- Feeding the soil and growing the right biology.
There have been some wonderful observations where some customers have made significant improvements to their soil condition through biological farming practices. One customer in particular has managed to reduce his nitrogen usage by 40%
Biological Farming
Our current system of farming has stalled in many instances, but costs continue to rise. By adoption of a biological rather than chemical solution, you can tap into the 74,000 tons of Nitrogen above every single farming hectare- which is not there by accident.
This saves on the cost of bagged fertiliser, reducing salt application that few microbes and roots appreciate. To believe the story of compulsory fertiliser use, implies that plant growth is impossible without it. When did you last see a hedge with nutrient deficiency?
This method will regenerate the soil in the middle of your field to that under the hedge. It works primarily by encouraging mycorrhiza fungi to colonize roots. As a very fragile extension to the root hairs, mycorrhiza massively increases the surface area where nutrients make contact with roots and become passively transported into the plant. They also leave a sticky sugar substance behind which creates a crumb structure, storage capacity as well as being a degradation resistant carbon sink.
More on Biological Farming
Biological Farming
Increasing your Soil Organic Matter will save you money on inputs and increase the quality of your produce. It’s that simple. It can only be done by protection and propagation of soil microbes.
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