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Plant Management-Water-Conserving Plants
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At a field day, Texas Tech
researcher Vivien Allen explains the innovative rotations she
designed to help cotton farmers diversify, save water and improve
profits.
Photo by David L. Doerfert |
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Most pasture species are adapted to specific climates, thus warm-season
grasses perform better in Texas. Cool-season varieties, such as
fescue, grow better in higher altitudes and cooler temperatures.
In the Texas Tech project, Allen and others are testing Bermuda
grasses, Dahl bluestem and Tifton 85, which are water-efficient
and saline-tolerant. “It’s hot, it’s dry -- that’s
what’s adapted out here,” Allen said.
While, in general, a cool-season grass has better forage quality,
Allen has seen excellent cattle gains on warm-season varieties.
She says it is important to match stocking rates to the rate of
pasture plant growth. “You can make a forage good quality
through the way you manage it,” she said. Her sequenced grazing
starts cattle on dormant bluestem, moves them to a small grain and
rye, then wheat, then back to bluestem.
“Pasture conserves more water than a [cotton] monoculture
because the grasses do not require as much water as the cotton,”
Allen said. “As long as we’ve got a perennial grass
that’s 50 percent of the system, we will use less water.”
Fescue is a grass valued by farmers for its ability to stay green,
and thus palatable and nutritious, during drought. The secret is
in fescue’s long, complex root system. Before he received
a SARE farmer grant to improve pasture for his flock of sheep, Richard
Tripp of Lakeville, Mass., used to see his fields peter out each
August, the hottest part of the season. Each year, he would buy
hay to supplement pasture for his three dozen sheep.
In his SARE project, Tripp took a crash course in soil chemistry.
He learned that his soil has little organic matter and retains just
a fraction of precipitation, explaining why his pastures performed
so poorly in dry conditions. He treated the soil with lime and pelletized
chicken manure and seeded tall fescue mixes with deep roots that
are good for both water absorption and intense grazing.
With the tall fescue, his flock stayed on pasture three extra months,
saving him about $1,300 a season in what he would have spent on
hay.
“Before the SARE project, my pasture management was sporadic
and somewhat arbitrary,” said Tripp, who, with his wife creates
handspun, hand-dyed wools for artisan products. “Since replanting
and replenishing, the invasive weeds have all but vanished, and
I am much more careful to have a regime of care for the land.
“Both pastures continue to do well. Perhaps because so much
study, time, energy, and money went into them, I have learned to
value them more and take better care of them.”
In the Southeast, where scorching hot summers can wither pastures,
dairy producer Tom Trantham of Pelzer, S.C., manages his fields
like a chessboard, seeding five to seven forages a year in grazing
paddocks to maximize nutrition, plant growth and water availability.
To provide his cows with a nutritious forage, Trantham plants different
varieties of millet for his herd to graze through seasonal late-summer
droughts into early fall.
“Tiff Leaf 3” has proved a very palatable, thin-stemmed
variety that withstands drought, a fortunate choice for the drought
of 2000. Trantham mixes clover or alfalfa for added nitrogen as
needed.
Certain varieties of grain crops also perform well in dry conditions.
Consider new crops that might work in your climate and provide a
market advantage.
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SARE grantee Richard Tripp,
with wife, Carol, planted heat-tolerant tall fescue in his Massachusetts
sheep pasture, reducing the need for supplemental hay. Photo by Donna Leombruno |
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Drought-resistant pearl millet is seeing a resurgence as a feed
grain for cattle, swine, catfish and poultry. A warm-season annual
grass, pearl millet’s high protein content has driven interest
by poultry producers. Moreover, with its short maturing season,
relative insensitivity to day length and good performance in dry
conditions, pearl millet can fill a mid-summer niche. Originating
in the arid Sahel region of Africa, pearl millet roots develop quickly,
traveling laterally and down into the soil to suck up moisture and
nutrients.
In Georgia, where most livestock producers import their grain
from the Corn Belt, farmers growing pearl millet for feed are finding
real market opportunities.
At the University of Georgia in Tifton, pearl millet researcher
Wayne Hanna gets two or three requests a day for seed. Millet, an
ancient food crop from West Africa, is also used for birdseed, food
products and is even brewed into beer. Other drought-tolerant crop
alternatives for the South include sesame and cowpeas.
Midwest farmers seeking to diversify from corn and soybeans into
crops that perform well in dry conditions might consider sunflowers,
sorghum, amaranth, pearl millet, foxtail millet, cowpeas and mung
beans, according to Rob Myers, executive director of the Thomas
Jefferson Agricultural Institute, which produces guides to promote
alternative crops.
“In the arid West, safflower is known as a drought-tolerant
alternative to wheat or alfalfa,” Myers said. “Native
grasses grown for seed, as annuals or perennials, are drought-tolerant
options in many regions of the country. For example, Indian rice
grass, a drought-tolerant native, is being grown for gluten-free
bread in Montana.”
Some horticultural crops, too, perform well in dry or droughty
conditions. The wild beach plum, a shrub native to the sand dunes
between Maine and Maryland, has helped some Northeast farmers diversify
and gain a niche-driven edge. Beach plums, the size and color of
purple grapes, make a tasty, unusual jam.
After SARE-funded researchers at Cornell University planted beach
plum stock on research stations and New York and Massachusetts farms
in 2002, their field day and resulting publicity encouraged 22 more
farmers to begin growing beach plums. Adapted to harsh dune environments,
beach plum plants performed well even during an extended summer
drought in 2002. Growers, who wait three or four years for plants
to bear fruit, can still expect a crop in dry years when other commodities
might fail.
Similarly, producers of nursery plants who consider climate-appropriate
perennials can raise healthy plants adapted to dry conditions, meeting
a growing demand for low-water-use landscape plants. Utah State
University researchers funded by SARE investigated an alternative
growing method for perennial wildflower species native to the Intermountain
West to meet demand for drought-tolerant plants that can be used
in low water or xeric landscapes.
The Utah team led by Roger Kjelgren grew native wildflowers in
a pot-in-pot production system, which places seedlings in containers
inserted into holders permanently dug into the field. The pot-in-pot
system results in nursery plants that grow more quickly because
their root zones stay cooler in the summer. A cooler root zone also
means the perennials use less water.
The study, which compared the pot-in-pot system to conventional
container production, showed that the new system increased growth
of native perennial wildflowers and lost less water. The difference
was especially dramatic on hot, dry days. At least one nursery,
which participated in the study in Clifton, Colo., plans to continue
using the system.
Crop Rotation
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