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One of the joys of working with farmers is the excitement I see on their faces when they "get it" about soil health. There were several excited farmers again this spring.

Cover Crop Root Pits Reveal Plenty

April 15, 2012

During the first week of April I was in several root pits in northwest Indiana and boy did we find plenty of interesting factoids! I was assisted by Eileen Kladivko from Purdue University on one day and Barry Fisher, Indiana NRCS State Agronomist, on another day. What We Found in the Cover Crop Root Pits […]

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Cover crops for gardens – and my wife, the cover cropping queen!

October 5, 2011

My wife Sally must love me…or at least she is observant to see how cover crops are improving the soil in our family gardens.  Over the nearly 19 years we have lived in our home we have had a garden where we often have raised vegetables for the Hispanic families that we minister to.  A […]

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Earthworm Population Corn Field Experiment

September 6, 2011

Robison Farms in the Greenwood, Indiana area have been no-till farming since the late 1960’s. The field that these videos were taken from has been no-tilled for approximately 20 consecutive years.  With the wet spring of 2011 the  gentleman that now does the field work for dad decided to chisel plow and disk most of […]

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66″ No-Till Corn Roots Following Cover Crops

September 6, 2011

I had a “see it to believe it” moment in late August near Stryker, Ohio (Williams County – NW Ohio).  A very long and deep root pit had been dug as Frank Gibbs (Ohio NRCS Resource Soil Scientist) was looking for the tile in a continuous no-till corn field.  I’m thankful that the tile was […]

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Crimson Clover; a jewel among the cover crop legumes

June 16, 2010

Crimson clover is a real jewel among the cover crop species.  Crimson clover is an excellent producer of nitrogen and there are some newer varieties on the market that are very winterhardy even into Michigan.  Dr. Eileen Kladivko measured how much nitrogen was produced by crimson clover in a test plot in western Indiana.  What […]

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Earthworms…valuable resource on farm ground

June 5, 2010

Earthworms are exceptionally valuable builders of  healthy, fertile topsoil.  Jill Clapperton stated that a good sign of a healthy topsoil was that a “shovel-full of soil” should have 8 earthworms in it.  In my  field diggings I have found anywhere from ZERO to 10 erathworms per shovel-full.  I found 10 in crimson clover, 8 in […]

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