THE OWNER BUILT HOME & HOMESTEAD
(Page 3 of 13)
September/October 1972
By Ken Kern
It was the Swiss dairymen who first demonstrated the value of harvesting immature forage. Alfalfa cut at a pre-bloom state has 28% protein and 12% mineral content; at full bloom it contains only 13% protein and 8% mineral. The Swiss also showed that grass under continuously heavy grazing is more nutritious than under light grazing. Frequent cutting promotes a continuous production of young, nutritious shoots. Young forage is more digestible and palatable as well.
RELATED CONTENT
I will show in the following chapter on row crops how their value depends primarily upon nitrogen and vitamin content. Now, except for the legume family, sod crops cannot accumulate large quantities of nitrogen. So it makes good agricultural sense to follow a sod crop (grass-legume mixture) with row crops (vegetables). This form of alternate husbandry is called Ley Farming, and it involves the full fertility cycle of crop-soil-animal relationship. A three-year sod cropping program rotates with a three-year row cropping. Ley farming becomes a rather good substitute for green manuring which may require a plowing under of the sod culture for possible soil enrichment.
Although it takes about seven acres of sod crops to equal the production of one acre of row crops, the nutrients supplied cost a fraction of the amount as that of row crops. The Bureau of Dairy Industry (USDA) made a four-year study of the relative cost of producing 100 pounds of totally digestible nutrients. It was found that the return from pasture crops per man-hour-labor is six times more than from corn, and ten times more than from barley.
And there is one other important sod-cropping statistic—this time provided by the Missouri Agricultural Research Station: on a land slope of three degrees, continuously cultivated soil erodes seven inches in 24 years; seven inches of continuously grown corn soil is eroded in 50 years; seven inches of continuously grown wheat soil is eroded in 100 years. But under continuously grown sod pasture it would take 3,000 years to erode seven inches of soil! It is little wonder that advocates of permanent pasture are so enthusiastic. Certainly every homestead would do well to include at least one permanent pasture. This pasture may be gown in companion with scattered tree crops as is often the case in southern forests of longleaf pine growing in open stands with an understory of sod crops. Most sod crops grow best and produce a higher protein level when grown in partial shade.
Although the major portion of permanent sod crops consists of perennial (self-seeding), and long-lived annuals, it may also include short-lived, aggressive and rapidly establishing species as Italian ryegrass. There is no hard-and-fast rule for determining optimum sod mixtures. Agriculturalists at one extreme favor "shotgun mixtures", the indiscriminate mixture of up to a dozen different species. Other experts advocate a two-seed, grass/ legume mix. Somewhere between these extremes lies essential, sod-growing knowledge usable by the small homesteader.
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