New Mexico Dryland Cover Crops Case Study
Rocking Petaca Ranch
The Great Plains Seed Drill that Greg rented to do his seeding was just right for the five acres he planted. PC: Rocking Petaca Ranch
Greg Busick operates the Rocking Petaca Ranch on 27 dryland acres in Carson, New Mexico. He and his wife raise a variety of small stock including, sheep, goats, pigs, layers, and ducks. They sell their products to local restaurants and customers. They use a USDA-certified slaughter facility in El Rito, New Mexico called Naturally New Mexico run by Don Martinez.
Greg didn’t grow up on a farm but has raised livestock for 30 years and was involved in 4-H with his children. “We wanted to grow quality food for ourselves and we saw the food shortages during the pandemics,” says Greg. “We want to be self-sufficient. I’m enjoying the farm but it does takes a time to feed and water them. The last couple of years I’ve been going to ag seminars and that’s where I learned about regenerative farming. I watched a Gabe Brown video that got me thinking and then I went to HMI field day in Taos to learn more.
This dryland triticale actually reached five feet in some places. PC: Rocking Petaca Ranch.
“In 2016 I began mowing the sagebrush on our property and I saw the native grasses coming back. So, I got with the Taos Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) and did a green cover crop planting. I planted 500 pounds of an 11-seed mix with a seed drill on five acres in October 2022. I got the seeds from Greencover and cost shared that with the Taos SWCD. On March 5th we had germination. It had been a cool-season mix and the winter rye, winter wheat, triticale, and barley all did well. By June the rye was five feet tall. This was all dryland farming. I was supposed to terminate the cover so I let it seed and dry and terminate on its own. Then I planted into it in October 2023.”
The cover mix included: Austrian winter peas, hybrid kale, impact collards, soft red beardless wheat, massa hairy vetch, winter lentil, winter triticale, Yankee cereal rye, and beardless winter barley. In addition, Greencover added a foundational fungi biological inoculant as well as cool-season rhizo fixer. This was Greg’s first time using a seed drill and potentially because of the use of manure fertilizer and good rains, he got better than 90%. “Since I never had used a seed drill, I watched a Youtube video”, says Greg.
Greg’s initial investment with the seeds was $8.50/cwt for less than $50 or $5/acre. He had Haney and standard soil tests done in October of 2022 before the covers and May of 2023 after the covers. The PLFA almost doubled after the cover crop moving from 1424 to 2432 PLFA ng/g. (The PLFA measures the living soil microbial biomass and provides information about the various functional microbial groups. The Fungi:Bacteria ratio moved from a below average score of .115 to an above average score of .201. The Haney test was performed by ReGen Ag Lab out of Nebraska.
To prepare for the covers Greg used the bucket on front of his tractor to spread manure on the five acres about a month before he planted the cover crop. He rented a six-foot Great Plains 606 seed drill from the Rio Arriba SWCD for $160/day. It took him a full day to do the seeding. He also added some wood chips to areas he knew were problem areas that didn’t retain water to improve the cover crops’ chance of germination and survival.
Wild Rye planted in 2022 performs well. PC: Rocking Petaca Ranch.
“I am seeing more wildlife on the property than I’ve ever seen before,” says Greg. “We’ve seen a covey of scaled quail and also a huge flock of doves. There were 200-300 of them with young ones learning how to fly.”
The cool-season covers performing well in what was once a shrub dominated area. PC: Rocking Petaca Ranch.
Some people say that planting cover crops on dryland in New Mexico doesn’t work. Greg Busick has proven that it does with proper preparation and implementation it can work. Seed drilling is an important part of the puzzle as well as getting a good cover mix from a reputable source. But for a small investment of time and money, cover crops can yield big results for biodiversity increase below and above the ground.
The post New Mexico Dryland Cover Crops Case Study appeared first on Holistic Management International.
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