Oats Harvested - What Next?

This past weekend, I drove by the property and saw that the oats had been harvested.  While I had not intended to walk the property that morning, I seized the opportunity.  As I walked the property, thoughts of "what next," flooded my mind.  One of the ideas that crossed my mind was getting a basic "soil correction" done for the property before the tenant farmer tilled the oat crop residue into the soil.

Earlier in the spring, I had taken a soil sample across the whole property.  The soil sample indicated that calcium levels were low, requiring about 300 pounds of actual calcium per acre, or about 800 pounds of high calcium lime (calcium carbonate).  Magnesium levels were in the right general range, so dolomitic lime would have been inappropriate.

Mid-summer I came across the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) soil survey maps of the property.  The maps suggested that the soils across the property were of different classes.  There were three basic categories of soils, Quatama loam, Verboort silty clay loam, and kind of a non-descript category of Xerochrepts and Haploxeralls.  The best soils on the higher parts of the land are Quatama loam.  The lower, drainage pathways were the Verboort silty clay laom. Lastly the area in the lower middle of the map that rolls off towards the stream bed below were the Xerochreps and Haploxeralls.  I think the last designation means that when they did the soil survey decades ago that the area was coverered by trees, so they didn't want to work to hard and climing through the undergrowth to properly categorize it.  But that's speculative on my part.

I had initially sampled the property in the spring as one homegenous property.  With this new soil map, I started thinking that maybe I should sample the three NRCS soil types independently to see if they were indeed dissimilar, meaning they should be treated differently, or if there was really no significant difference, meaning they could be treated the same.  I determined to sample the sections of the land that corresponded to the NRCS soil survey map.

I took my trusty soil probe to the property to collect 60 soil cores needed to do the sampling for three different soil types.  After about 15 minutes, I had taken about 1 1/2 cores.  The soil was dry and as a result, fairly impenetrable with a soil probe.  When I had taken samples back in April, taking the samples was a breeze because the soil was very moist.

Since I really could not get soil samples, I'm thinking that I'll wait on the soil correction until next year.  I don't know when the tenant farmer is going to till the oat crop residue into the soil, but it will probably be before the soil is in good condition to take soil samples.

In the meantime there are many other "what next" projects that are garnering my attention.