Cassie LeMaster 0:01

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Extension Connection Podcast. I'm your co-host, Cassie LeMaster equine livestock and forage agent for Polk County, North Carolina. This time of year, we start thinking about spring greenup and the soil fertility needed to support that forage growth. Fertility is more than a quick trip around the field with the fertilizer truck. Supporting the health of your soil year round, but especially this time of year, we'll have big payoffs throughout the grazing season. So let's talk about your soil. If you're listening from the North Carolina foothills, you may have a love hate relationship with your heavy iron, rich red clay soil. When it's wet, it's a swamp. When it's dry, it's a brick. But today I want to challenge the idea that our soil is inherently bad. In fact, with the right management, this clay can be one of the most productive mediums for forage growth in the Southeast. Today we're going deep into the chemistry, the biology, and the management of soil health, specifically for our pastures and hay fields. Let's start with the most common hurdle we face. Acidity. Our soils are naturally quite acidic, often sitting at a pH of five or lower. This is especially true if you've cleared trees off your property in recent years to convert to a pasture or a forage crop. Since in most cases the top soil is pushed up with the stumps. If you're trying to grow tall fescue or orchard grass at that pH level, you're going to be fighting a losing battle. This is because at a low pH, many nutrients become bound in other chemical bonds and become unavailable to the plants. Even if you pour fertilizer onto that field, the plant can't utilize it because the chemical environment has it locked up. The target pH for your cool season pasture, grasses especially, is between six and six and a half. The warm season grasses can tolerate slightly more acidic soil. Lime or calcium carbonate is the additive that's used to correct soil pH. We refer to this as Ag lime. Now I'm often asked what time of year to apply lime is best, and the answer to that is six months ago. Lime can take several months to activate and change the pH of the soil. So try to think many months in advance of any seeding or establishment plans. For established pastures, lime can be applied at any time. The other nutrient that tends to be deficient in our soils is phosphorus. Phosphorus is an important root nutrient that's also required for energy transfer within the plant. It can bind heavily to soil particles, so it takes time to transfer into the root zone where the plant can access it. If you're tilling an area with plans to establish a new pasture, it's always a good idea to till in phosphorus and lime according to your soil test result. Speaking of, the best tool in your arsenal is the North Carolina Department of Agriculture's Soil Test. Remember, in North Carolina, these tests are free from April through November. A single test can save you thousands of dollars by telling you exactly how much lime you need to unlock the nutrients that are already sitting in your soil. Perennial pastures should be tested every two to three years. Fields used for hay production, over seeded in the winter or tilled and planted to an annual forge crop should be tested each year. A pound or less of soil in that sample will represent millions of pounds of soil in the pasture field, so it should be a representation of the entire area. Now let's compare a hay field versus a pasture. There's a massive difference between a field that is grazed and a field that's cut for hay. In a grazed pasture, your livestock or horses act as walking nutrient recyclers. Roughly 80% of the nutrients that they eat go right back onto the ground as manure and urine. But in a hay field, you're mining the soil. Every time you roll a bale and feed it on a different pasture or sell it to a different farm, you are physically removing nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. A single ton of fescue hay removes about 50 pounds of nitrogen and 50 pounds of potassium. If you aren't replacing those specific nutrients based on your soil test, your soil health will decline every year until the only thing left growing is broom, sedge, and moss, the two biggest indicators of low fertility and high acidity. So how do we fix it? It's not just what you put in a spreader, it's how you manage your soil altogether. In our heat, in the summertime, bare soil is a death sentence for soil biology. I always tell folks, never graze or mow cool season grasses, like fescue, shorter than four inches. Those four inches of leaf act as both a solar panel for the plant, but also an armor or shade for the soil. They keep the ground temperature cooler, which keeps your soil microbes alive during the heat of the summer. Consider adding legumes. You don't have to just rely on nitrogen applications alone for the fertility of your forage. Interceding a clover variety in February can work towards significantly cutting your fertilizer bill. Legumes have a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria that lives on their root and allows them to fix nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil. Ideally, you would aim for about a 30% clover mix in your grass stands. Now for compaction control. Our clay compacts easily. If you leave livestock in one spot all winter for feeding, or if you let them walk on areas during wet conditions, they're gonna damage the soil, destroy the structure that allows water and nutrients to move down through that soil profile. Utilize a heavy use area or a dry lot. Or rotate your hay feeding areas. And that is essential to keeping the red clay porous so that water can actually sink in rather than running off down into the creek. So for many horse and livestock owners, the focus is often on what's happening above the ground, the height of the grass, the absence of weeds, and the condition of the animals. However, your pasture is only as good as the soil beneath it. Healthy soil isn't just dirt. It's a living ecosystem that dictates the nutritional value of your forage and the resilience of your land. Soil health also isn't one and done Saturday project. It's a series of small, intentional decisions. It's starts with a soil probe and a trip to the post office to mail your sample to the lab, and it continues with how you set your mower height and how often you move your livestock or horses. If you take care of the soil, the soil will take care of the grass, and the grass will take care of your livestock. Thanks for tuning in to the Extension Connection Podcast. Tune in the third Wednesday of each month for more equine, livestock and pasture related topics.