2021 Fall Soil Assessment
We completed our 2021 soil assessments on November 2nd. We had a team of NRCS and SWCD staff tough out the cold windy day completing the three replicas of each assessment along with collecting the 72 soil samples. This fall turned into a very dry year. We had decent moisture to start our growing season but it shut off mid summer and we dried down fast with the wind. As soil results are returned from the labs the data will be shared at our field day in July and then posted to this website.
A fun demonstration we did this year was the Soil Your Undies. 60 days before our field day we buried three pairs of 100% cotton undies, one in each tillage treatment. We dug a hole 6" down, the size of the undies, covered them with soil and left for 2 months. We marked the spots with flags and GPS so we would be sure to find them when we returned. The picture to the right shows the results of the 2021 Soil Your Undies demonstration. The No-Till had quit a bit of it's undies eaten away by bacteria and fungi compared to the Strip-Till having some and the conventional tillage barely being touched. This demo really shows the story of how the soil, when given a chance, can multiply it's ability to function if it's not tore up with tillage year after year. Don't get me wrong, fields that are tilled can still produce great crops, but they have to rebuild their food web year after year where as no-till and strip-till fields don't feel the effects of such tillage.
Below are the links to the data that was collected in 2021. For trends on each soil test check out the graphs on the Soils Monitoring main page.