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Green and growing
By Bruce Bosley Colorado State University Cooperative Extension The current heat wave experienced across Colorado's High Plains region illustrates the trouble with trying to conserve moisture in the soil. During summer heat anyone who spends time outdoors experiences the drying ability of heat, sunlight, and winds. They can drink several quarts of water without changing their daily restroom habits. These same conditions also dry up crops and soils in fallow fields. It's a really tough time to store any moisture in bare soils. Dryland farmers have found ways to increase their cropping income by using no-till techniques and multiple crop rotations including summer crops. These farmers make better use of stored soil moisture and capture of rainfall and snows than in the traditional wheat fallow farming practiced across eastern Colorado for most of the past century. No-till provides old crop surface residue which act as a protective blanket to reduce soil evaporation. Residues also slow and disperse raindrops reducing soil crusting and enhancing the speed of soil infiltration. In the winter, standing crop stubble helps to catch and retain snow adding, in effect, more precipitation. Over time, no-till farming builds the soil structure and enhances soil quality. These improved soils increase the speed of moisture to infiltrate deeply, as well as fosters deeper rooting. The newer dryland crop rotations also include the use of spring planted summer grain and oilseed crops: corn, proso millet, sunflowers, grain sorghum (milo), and forage crops. The real advantage of having these crops in rotations with winter wheat is that they make use of the moisture that falls during the summer rather than having any summer rainfall evaporate on bare fields. Studies have shown that when soils are wet in the summer, the drying summer climate evaporates most to all of the stored moisture. These studies have shown these conditions will dry out nearly all of the summer rains and some of the soil moisture stored in the top couple of feet even with a good crop residue. The summer crops make use of much of the rainfall before it evaporates. Better yet, they dry out the surface layer of soil nearly eliminating any evaporation. This root dried surface is primed to take in the later summer rains that fall throughout the rest of the summer. Forage crops, annual, or perennial are the most efficient for farmers because they are more likely to be harvestable during dry summer years when the grain and oil fail to mature a harvestable crop. Please contact me, Bruce Bosley about these or other cropping systems or natural resource topics at 522-3200, extension 285 in Sterling or 542-3540 in Fort Morgan. Date: 7/19/07
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