How No-Till, Cover Crops, and Grazing Build Mellow Soil
Visit Jimmy Emmons' farm in Oklahoma to see what years of no-till, cover crops, high-intensity grazing, and crop rotation have done to his soil. Watch as Brett Peshek and Jim Johnson dig into the topsoil and discover why proper management practices create the kind of mellow, friable soil structure that holds water and supports earthworm activity—even in dry conditions.
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0:01 So here we are in Jim Hammonds my local field.
0:05 Cover crops past several days years for.
0:09 Years.
0:10 Cover crops, some high-intensity grazing on that, some rotation crops. What's.
0:15 Really interesting to me is the bell inist of this topsoil, the fact that I can reach down and take my hand and and...
0:26 Grab handfuls of soil we're sitting here on July 24th it's dry but this is mellow and this is no-till and been no-till for.
0:37 Years but the cover crops, the crop rotation, the high-intensity grazing I believe has really done a lot to mellow.
0:46 This whole surface and you can see it as you walk on it and you can definitely feel it with your hands and it's just.
0:56 Amazing to me. I'm mellow, this is, and so.
1:05 Jimmy says that when the weather is nice, this is just full of earthworms and.
1:30 Greens organs showing that we still have water in the profile. We're at 11 o'clock in the morning here, probably 85 degrees.
1:41 Still pretty fresh appearance for as dry as we are on top so we know we got water still in the profile that we're feeding.
1:51 Which we start, so apparently no-till doesn't get hard, it gets mellow if you...
2:03 Do it right. If you do it right, cover crops, grazing, crop rotation, use the soil health principles. You had the system for this to work and this is what I could. I agree with you that this is working around.