By Web Dev|11th November, 2022
In early 2022, Bass Coast Landcare organised a farm walk on Regen Soils’ property at Kardella in south Gippsland.
The property was purchased in January 2021 under contract to a pea grower until May 2021. The journey from fully cultivated paddocks to a functioning grazing property with diverse pasture managed under an holistic grazing regime, integrated tree plantings for high value timber harvest, riverine corridor restoration, weed control and a semi-commercial orchard was mapped out.
The process commenced with soil testing of discrete parts of the farm to understand the impact of many cultivations for successive pea harvests. Silty clay loam soils were moderately to strongly acid with low salinity and moderate to low soil carbon stocks. Cation balance was dominated by hydrogen (as expected in an acid soil) and magnesium. The low calcium status and low calcium to magnesium ratio predispose the soil to weak soil structure and a vulnerability to compaction. This was shown by the shocking level of pugging damage caused by the leasee’s cattle spending too much time in wet paddocks over the previous winter.
Immediately after the pea contract finished, I was on the paddocks. Even though I inherited a plough pan courtesy of pea cultivations and the fact that my soils needed lime, the last thing I wanted to do was cultivate again given how much the pasture soils had been beaten up by successive cultivations. I selected a diverse pasture blend to do a number of things. First and foremost, I needed to repair plough pans (subsurface compaction layers caused by rotary hoeing), generate massive inputs of organic matter, and strongly stimulate soil biology. But I also wanted this sowing to be the last as I didn’t want to cultivate again. I did a permaculture certificate with David Holmgren back in 1989 and one of the aphorisms I took away was: ‘don’t do anything that a plant or animal will do for free’. So I selected a mix of annuals and perennials that included plants with big compaction-busting roots, plants with huge fibrous root systems capable of dumping lots of organic carbon into the soil via exudates and of course legumes for nitrogen. My aim was to allow plants to grow big, set seed and lay a foundation for the development of a stable and diverse pasture.
My pasture blend included the following:
- Perennial rye @ 10kg/ha
- Cocksfoot @ 10kg/ha
- Phalaris @ 5kg/ha
- Subclover @ 0.5kg/ha
- Crimson clover @ 0.5kg/ha
- White clover @ 0.5kg/ha
- Vetch @ 5kg/ha
- Tillage radish @ 2kg/ha
- Safflower @ 2kg/ha
The wet conditions of winter 2021 prevented lime being applied early. Lime was eventually applied at about 5t/ha in March 2022. The very dry summer of 2022 meant the ground was hard (high soil strength) which is a good time to bring in heavy machinery to spread the lime. Luckily, the lime will just sit there waiting for rain to help it into the soil. The small amount of rain we have had so far has washed the lime off plant leaves and onto the soil surface which is a good start!
Lime is highly insoluble and very slow to act with surface applications. Cultivating the lime in was not an option given the successful sowing of the diverse cover crop / pastures. Maintaining high levels of groundcover not only maintains the soil surface in as open a condition as possible, it also encourages biological activity to move the lime into the soil.
The annuals in the cover crop were allowed to seed and some of that seed is emerging now in Autumn 2022 through the perennial grasses. New stock water has gone in to align with the plan to employ holistic grazing management across the property. New fencing subdivision is happening this Autumn 2022 in line with the grazing plan.
I’ll continue to update all on progress of ‘The Hill’ as a best practice demonstration farm for regenerative agriculture.
