<![CDATA[Dryland agriculture

<![CDATA[Dryland agriculture - Blog]]>Sun, 10 May 2026 11:25:50 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Busy bees]]>Fri, 23 Feb 2018 18:28:55 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/busy-bees

When they’re not busy identifying bees from our research fields, the pollinator teaming is putting together factsheets! Check out these new resources on attracting native bees and building pollinator habitat. You can also find the links on our ‘Resources Page’.
Spring is on its way and plenty of opportunities to attract our native pollinators are coming with it!

]]><![CDATA[Research Update]]>Tue, 23 Jan 2018 21:35:10 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/research-updateThe last cattle are off the last fall grazed field. All the samples are all collected. The freezers are full of more insects, forage, and soil samples than you could ever imagine. So, what have our researchers, technicians, graduate students, and intrepid undergraduates been up to all this time?

Soils Team

The soils team has been hard at work processing fertility samples collected from the spring planted plots.

An important measure of soil health is wet aggregate stability, which allows us to assess the resilience of the soil aggregates when disrupted by water.

A soil sample down to 5 centimeters was collected and gently broken up into small pieces to fit through an 8 millimeter (about 1/3 inch) sieve spaces. After the soil dries, we put it on a sieve with smaller holes (2 millimeters), submerge the soil on the sieve for a few minutes, and then gently lift in the soil on the sieve in and out of the water for 2 minutes. The large stable aggregates will stay on top of the sieve, and the rest of the soil will pass through. The soil that passed through then goes on to a smaller mesh sieve (250 micron mesh size), and the process is repeated. The soil that passes through that sieve is then poured on top of an even finer mesh sieve (53 micron), and submerged repeatedly, as before. The soil on top of each sieve is dried and weighed to get our final data, which tell what percent of the soil is large or small aggregates.

2 millimeter mesh size with large aggregates on top.

250 micron mesh with medium-sized aggregates on top

Pollinator TEAM

Collections of wild bees were performed between late May and early September using blue vane traps. Since then the pollination biology lab has begun the preliminary steps of specimen identification by pinning and separating specimens by morphological characters. Once processed, each bee is identified down to genus (although species information is recorded where possible) and a tally is taken to map the diversity and abundance of bee pollinators within the field for each treatment (i.e. fallow, grazed, or ungrazed). We were lucky enough to recover several thousand bee specimens over the course of the summer and are looking forward to reporting our findings.

Graduate students have the most fun identifying insects!

Collected bee on a pin

Bees gather in an immature sunflower

Pollinator traps in the field

Forage TEAM

Cover crops were clipped before, during, and after cattle grazing. Cover crops and weeds are then sorted by species. By sorting the cover crops, we can gain a better understanding of what species grow well on the High Plains and what was available for the cattle to graze on. Sorting individual weed species helps us understand the impact grazing has on the weed populations. While sorting doesn’t sound like the most challenging activity, it takes a lot of time and patience. Most of the weed species we’ve encountered are common and easy to identify, but every now and then, a species comes along that we haven’t seen yet. It’s always a lot of fun to identify a plant you’ve never seen before! After clippings are sorted, they are dried, weighed, ground, and finally forage quality is assessed using NIR. Sorting of the 2017 spring planted cover crops is almost done and we can look forward to compiling that data.

Students identifying cover crops in the field

Sorting plants by species

Cover crops ground and ready for quality analysis!

]]><![CDATA[Time to get dirty]]>Mon, 07 Aug 2017 20:49:49 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/time-to-get-dirtySoil season has arrived! This past month was spent collecting soil samples from both the spring-planted and post-wheat cohorts for analysis.

Our stellar undergraduate field assistant Bailey, with some cows! Bailey is our resident hydraulic probe expert and gets all of our deep soil samples.

Fields that were finishing up with spring grazing were sampled down to 6 feet for moisture, and will be analyzed for other soil health and fertility indicators including soil carbon and nitrogen, bulk density and aggregation. Check out the video file below to see the hydraulic probe in action.

hydrualic_soil_probe_video.mp4
File Size:	5043 kb
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Download File

Fields that are preparing to plant the cover crop mix for the fall (or have already planted) were sampled for baseline soil moisture and fertility.

Soils samples getting ready to go into the oven. By weighing the samples before and after drying out all the moisture, we can calculate the relative moisture in each sample.

Bailey working the hydraulic probe.

Special thanks to Angie Moore for all of her tireless work on this project and helping us pull together all of our sampling trips. Thanks Angie!

Here are some soil samples of increasing depth going right. You can see the soil get lighter as organic matter decreases going deeper. Lots of factors affect organic matter formation, including moisture, plant litter inputs and tillage practices.

So exciting to see purple top turnips growing! Lots of carbon directly into the soil plus soil pore formation, and the cattle love them!

Angie dividing the soil sampling into our fancy sampling containers: Ziploc freezer bags.

]]><![CDATA[Wheat Harvest]]>Thu, 29 Jun 2017 19:11:21 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/wheat-harvestWow, it has been a busy few weeks! Manhart, Thompson, and Sayles finished grazing this week, and wheat harvest is in full swing. We are getting ready for the post wheat planting of the cover crop and preparing experimental designs for the fields.

It's been a while since we made a post, so I've accumulated a lot of great photos and videos. We've also gotten a lot of great photos/videos from producers. Keep them coming! We really enjoy getting to see what things look like when we're not able to be there. My personal favorite is the video from Feikert showing the monitor during wheat harvest. It's so exciting!!!

This was at Manhart's about two weeks (middle of June) ago during our midpoint sampling.

This was also at Manhart's and was taken right around midpoint sampling. I think the pollinators are happy with the rapeseed.

This is Zip. He runs a data management business, and specializes in ‘fuzzy’ numbers.

This was from Sayles's field at the start of the experiment a couple weeks ago. He had a good amount of biomass, but the weather has been dry. He was only able to graze for a week before moving the cattle.

Here is an overview of the quadrat that we use to collect data on the transects and for biomass sampling. This is 0.5 square meters of cover crop. The residue cover is outstanding.

Thanks to this awesome group, we got the last set of forage samples done at Thompson's and Manhart's. They also took wheat samples from last years spring cover crop fields at Thompson's, Manhart's, and Neff's. Way to go team!!!!

Future agronomists in the making!

What do you mean I cant lay in the quadrat? That's where your hands are and hands are for petting.

Field season would not be complete without cute critters. This little guy was in Manhart's field.

The flax was in full bloom at Thompson's field. It was a beautiful day to stand still for a few moments.

Guss hopping through the forage!

Thompson's field has a small corner that has some volunteer rye. I had to go sit in the middle and take a picture. It's not often that one gets to sit in a field of rye (well, a corner of a field anyways).

Behind the scene at Feikert's...............

These sneaky ladies came to eat right out of my quadrat during our first set of forage samples at Feikert's. I think one of them is giving me the sly eye in this picture.

Feikert harvested the wheat from last year's spring planted field (2016). It's so exciting watching the yield monitor!

I had to include this because it's such a neat photo.

Farnik's field when the cattle went on a couple weeks ago. Look at the beautiful sunflowers!!!

]]><![CDATA[That's a funny looking weed...]]>Mon, 12 Jun 2017 17:30:59 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/thats-a-funny-looking-weedWe hit the road again this week for Kansas. On the docket this week was another set of weed transects, forage sampling, and cattle weights. While cattle were getting their measurements taken, our crew hit the field to count some weeds. Why count the weeds? Besides forcing undergraduates to learn weed identification, knowing the weed population at the start of the season will help us evaluate the weed suppressive abilities of both the cover crop and grazing. It will also help us understand the weed populations over the seasons and years. We’re planning on doing these transects when the cattle go on the field and after the cattle come off. Transects will be repeated in the following wheat crop to evaluate the weed control resulting from our efforts. That’s the management goal: control weeds now so there are less next year.
Speaking of weeds, once we clip forage samples in the field, we bring them all back to the lab at CSU and sort each by plant species. This part is just to make another undergraduate learn their plant id (there’s a scientific reason too, I promise).
Look forward to us to (and our fuzzy helpers) counting away in the field all summer!

We found some very odd weeds

Purple top turnip after the foliage has been clipped off.

]]><![CDATA[It's time to collect Data!]]>Fri, 02 Jun 2017 20:57:15 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/its-time-to-collect-dataThe weather is warm and the cover crop is growing fast. The spring mix contains a nice mix of oats, barley, triticale, peas, flax, safflower, sunflower, rapeseed, and purple top. We are currently weighing cattle as they go onto the field, taking forage samples, and investigating the weed community using transects. The forage samples will be taken back to the lab, sorted by species, and an oven-dried weight will be taken on all the different species represented in each sample.

The cool season forage species are dominant in Manhart's field. They've had a lot of rain this spring and would have preferred to start grazing last week. The cool temperatures have helped slow things down, but now that the warm weather has kicked in things are growing fast.

Feiker's field is at about the same growth stage as Manhart's, maybe even a little farther behind in spots.

The dog is named Zip. He's our roadie this year. He loved exploring the forage with us at Manhart's.

The temperatures have been cool at Feikert's as well. However, in his field there is a nice mixture of cool and warm season cover crop species.

]]><![CDATA[HB Ranch FIeld Day]]>Mon, 22 May 2017 02:48:08 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/hb-ranch-field-dayAugustine Obour with Kansas State University organized a successful cover crop field day at the HB Ranch near Brownell, Kansas, on May 19th. The day was wet and cool, but many turned out to hear about KSU research looking at spring and summer cover crops that are grazed, hayed, or left in the field. We also presented preliminary results from Year 1 of the grazed cover crop on-farm study.

]]><![CDATA[Three Fields Done and Three to go!]]>Mon, 01 May 2017 18:37:24 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/three-fields-done-and-three-to-go
Treatments have been established for three out of the six fields provided to us by producers participating in the spring cover crop grazing. The wheat near Bucklin was at heading or getting close. In Almena and Grainfield the wheat was still in the boot, but getting close! There were a lot of beautiful sites on this journey. I've included a few neat pictures at the end.

Sunflowers, rapeseed, oats, and more. The cover crop is up and so are the weeds!

The cover crop is up and growing fast. Grazing is just around the corner.

What beautiful shades of blue and green! The wheat that is planted in the field from last year at Feikert’s farm was at heading while we were there. At Thompson and Manhart’s it was at booting. I sure hope the storm that just passed through didn’t damage the crop.

We use bright pink flags to make it easier to see treatments in the field. Behind me is one of the fallow plots. The wind moved in, and we were unable to spray at Thompson and Manhart's fields. I’m planning a trip later this week to spray those locations.

]]><![CDATA[Time to lay out Field experiments!]]>Tue, 18 Apr 2017 20:36:14 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/time-to-layout-field-experiments

Now that everyone has planted and the cover crop is officially growing, it's time to lay out the experiments!

The plan was to lay out the experiments three weeks after planting, but some of the fields have already been planted for a month or more. Since things tend to green up faster the farther east one goes, we decided to start with the eastern locations and work our way west.

I will be in contact with the producers on the project shortly to let them know when to expect us.

Thanks All!

]]><![CDATA[Spring Soil Moisture]]>Tue, 18 Apr 2017 18:56:00 GMThttps://www.drylandag.org/blog/spring-soil-moisture

We've had a great start to this season. I've enjoyed the opportunity to visit everyone’s fields for spring soil moisture sampling, and I'm excited to say that everyone has planted. It was a dry start to the season but luckily, we have had a little moisture move through to help get things started.

I will be posting updates, plans, and pictures here regularly. In addition, I will be sending out shorter updates via email. Please feel free to share or post comments and updates as well.

Now that we have made it through the first round of soil moisture sampling, it is time to lay out the treatments! I would like to say a special thank you to John and Wilma. I always learn so much from the two of you. Thank you for all of your help!

Lance Feikert

The first location we visited was Lance Feikert’s at the end of February. John and I fought the bitter wind and watched the top soil from neighboring fields cloud the sky.

The soil was so dry that the probe seemed to slide effortlessly all the way down to six feet. The 65-acre field was planted on March 20, 2017.

Larry and Doug Manhart

Wilma and I went to Larry and Doug Manhart’s March 10, 2017. It was cold, but sampling went well. The soil and soil moisture appeared to be highly variable across the 100-acres we sampled. There were spots where it was so dry that getting a sample was easy and others where it was too wet to take a sample. The field slopes and has many terraces. We arranged the blocks in the field to go with the terraces and tried our best to sample between them. The field was planted six days later on March 16, 2017.

Curtis Sayles

Wilma, Bailey, and I got lucky when we sampled Curtis Sayles's field on March 14, 2017 because he planted earlier that same day. The field is 105.5-acres, runs from east to west, and is very long. The west end of the field is higher than the east, and in the north east corner there is a low spot. The variability in the soil moisture will probably reflect these differences.

It was a wonderful and warm day to be outside working!

We ended up getting a late start, so the sun lit up the sky with brilliant color as we drove home and it sank into the horizon. Pheasants littered the roadside in the light, and as soon as the dark settled, an owl swooped in front of our truck just to make sure Wilma was still paying attention to the road.

Todd Farnik

Our next adventure to Todd Farnik’s field was a bit more challenging. Again, we got lucky, because Todd was planting his field when we pulled up to sample. The field is 43-acres and was planted on March 23, 2017. Our challenge that day was the layer of sand and/or bedrock under the field that varies in depth. We also had problems with the probe and the GPS system, but we got the job done. Thankfully, our longest day of work had the shortest drive home.

Michael Thompson

We decided to do the last two fields in one trip. Michael Thompson had already planted his field on March 27, 2017. We sampled the 49.6-acre field on April 6, 2017. The field is incredibly similar to the spring planted field Michael planted last year. The soil was wet and there was standing water along some of the terraces. There were several spots that were too wet to sample, so we had to move on top of a terrace where it was dry enough to get the probe down into the profile.

Adorable! I love my job <3

Again, there was a big visual difference between the grazed and ungrazed treatments.

Steve Tucker

The last field we visited was Steve Tucker’s field in Venango, NE. The field is 80-acres and has a low spot that collects water on the North West corner. We sampled on April 7, 2017 and the field was planted one week later on April 14, 2017. Similar to last year, we could not sample down to 6 ft. There is a layer of bedrock under the field that varies in depth. I’m guessing we may have made it down to 3 feet on average and in some places only 2 feet.

You can just barely make out the ungrazed treatment from replication 1 in these photos.

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