Maximize Soil Cover
Image Credit: Joe Smedberg
Maximize Soil Cover
Maximizing soil cover involves using living plants and plant residues to maintain a protective armor over the soil year round.
(NRCS – Principles of High Functioning Soils)
Maximize Soil Cover
Maximizing soil cover involves using living plants and plant residues to maintain a protective armor over the soil year round.
(NRCS – Principles for High Functioning Soils)
Importance:
In natural systems, the soil is covered permanently. When soil becomes exposed, for example a tree is uprooted in a storm, or prairie is opened by a wildfire, new plants move in to fill the opened space.
Keeping the soil covered helps:
- Control Erosion – Cover on the soil (such as crop residue or cover crops) protects soil from wind and/or water as it moves across the soil surface. This holds the soil, as well as soil organic matter and nutrients, in place.
- Reduce Evaporation Rates – Soil cover reduces the soil evaporation rates, keeping more moisture available for plant use.
- Regulate Soil Temperatures – Soil cover helps soils maintain a more moderate range of soil temperatures, keeping soil warmer in cold weather, and cooler in hot weather. Like us, the soil food web functions best when soil temperatures are moderate.
- Provide Habitat – Soil cover provides a protective habitat for the soil food web’s surface dwellers.
Chris Pollack interseeds between corn rows to provide maximum soil cover in this field.
Video Credit: Matt Brugger
- Reduce Compaction – Rainfall on bare soils is one cause of soil compaction. When rainfall hits the cover instead of bare soil, much of the raindrop energy is dissipated.
- Suppress Weed Growth – Soil cover (like crop residue or cover crops) limits the amount of sunlight available to weed seedlings.
- IMPROVE SOIL HEALTH!
- (NRCS – Soil Armor)
- Reduce Compaction – Rainfall on bare soils is one cause of soil compaction. When rainfall hits the cover instead of bare soil, much of the raindrop energy is dissipated.
- Suppress Weed Growth – Soil cover (like crop residue or cover crops) limits the amount of sunlight available to weed seedlings.
- IMPROVE SOIL HEALTH!
- (NRCS – Soil Armor)
Chris Pollack interseeds between corn rows to provide maximum soil cover over all the soil in this field.
Video Credit: Matt Brugger
Our Farmers at Work
Our Farmers at Work
The Between the Lakes Demonstration Farm Network farmers are working to maximize soil cover in their operations.
The Between the Lakes Demonstration Farm Network farmers are working to maximize soil cover in their operations. Learn how they do this in the chart below.
To do this, they use
