Warm Season Soil Builder Mix: 60 Days of Growth and Weed Control

0:00 One of the things that Green Cover that we've always preached and always been huge believers in, Dale, is the power of diversity. And as we look at things planted in monoculture strips and then we compare it to how it looks in a beautiful diverse mix like this, I'm always amazed—probably shouldn't be surprised anymore, but I'm always amazed at how nice things look in the mix.

0:26 This is our warm season soil builder mix. It's got probably 12 to 15 different plants in it. And it's just incredible how these things all grow together in such harmony, and how for the most part everything in here looks better than it does when we looked at it in the monoculture strips. What's your observations here, Dale?

0:46 Number one thing I see is

0:49 I don't see it, what I don't see, yeah that's weeds. No weeds, there's no weeds in here and there's been no weeding done in here. Some of our plots will do some weeding just so we can identify things, but I never let them weed out the mixes because that's what we want to show: how good a weed control you get when you get all these different plants. They've basically, I like to say that.

1:13 Weeds are a sign from God that we're not using all the sunlight and moisture that we've received, and so when you get a mix and you get weeds, when you have unused sunlight and moisture because you got niches, ecological niches that aren't being filled, when you have this kind of diversity you got tall plants, short plants, you got warm season, cool season.

1:39 You got all these different variety of plants they fill all the niches there's no unused space and because there's no unused space either above ground or below ground there's no unused sunlight, no unused water, no unused nutrients. Everything is getting utilized and so you just get this nice blend.

2:08 Was planted the end of May and we're now here in the end of July, so this is only about 60 days worth of growth. Cattle guys watching this are going to be drooling wishing they could turn something into this because there's a lot of forage out here, a lot of grazing ability. The other thing that I've noticed here in looking at a lot of these same components in their.

2:29 Monoculture strips is that the maturity of some of these things, particularly the brassicas, has been much delayed. So here's an African cabbage, and when we looked at this down in those strips, these are all in full bloom and starting to set seed pods. This one however has not yet bloomed. It's the maturity has been delayed, so the grazibility and.

3:18 We've had a lot of 90 and 100 degree heat here. It's pretty well fried them in their strips by themselves in these mixes. They look fine. Why is that? Is it a different little climate down there? What's going on?

3:30 Yeah, absolutely. It's a different microclimate because basically your cool season plants need

3:40 To have temperatures below they function best when temperatures are below 86 Fahrenheit and obviously out in the open in the summer we've had we're over that most of the time but when you have these warm season plants here getting up above it shading it absorbing that initial transpiring they create a cooler microclimate underneath and you know cool these brassicas will grow.

4:08 Super fast in October out in the open and very slow in July because it's just too hot. But when you create this cooler microclimate, it's like turning a July day into an October day. There's less sun, but it might be 20 or 30 degrees cooler here than it is up here. And that's why we see them growing a little slower. They're not as far along in the maturity cycle, but looking much, much healthier.

4:35 It's like if you're out in the hot sun and you go find a shade tree, it's way more pleasant. Oh absolutely, these things are under the shade trees here. Now you do have to be careful that you don't get too many of the warm season things because you can't choke them out. You can eliminate all sunlight, which then is not going to help them. But in this, this is our again our warm season soil builder. So we've got some sunflowers, we do have some sorghums, some dwarf sorghums. They don't get as tall, but at relatively low rates because we don't want it to take over. We're trying to build the soil with all of this diversity in here.