"Gordon Couger" wrote in message
news:3ed2cf4f_4@newsfeed...
Jim,

Planing simi dwarf winter wheat and terminating with Round Up just as it
heads and planting no till cotton in it works well. Using Round Up and
other
herbicide to control the weeds. The cover shades the ground and reduces
evaporation and breaks the impact of the rain drops on the soil so it
doesn't seal over as badly. That's not a problem in your 2 inch per hour
rainfall events. I don't now how hard it rains here I have been caught out
in a 10 inch per hour rain and it most of it came in 25 or 30% of the
hour.
Most of the time you could see to drive.

The big advantage we are seeing from no till is increasing organic matter
and increasing of invertebrates and soil microbes.

The kind of solid I have that makes a difference. It is mostly a granite
based soil that is just various sizes of worn out sand down to a 40 foot
red bed http://www.couger.com/microscope/carl/sand.jpg The top soil is
just
organic matter and dust that the grass trapped over the eons it was
prairie.
The Red River is a juncture of two colliding plates that pushed up Wichita
Mountains and the oldest geological feature in the US. As you get close to
the mountains there is granite sand still visible.



must admit we tend to go for inches a day rather than per hour. Our soil
varies from almost blowing sand on top of pinnel (a mix of clay and small
stones) all the way to a nice black soil (5 inches deep) on top of blue
clay. Hence we have land I do not let cattle on from October to April and
land you can drive over any day of the year. Not bad on 150 acres is it?
Some of our land will have been ploughed on and off for about 3000+ years,
some was only cleared of scrub as late as 1700 so is relatively new.
We have limestone underneath, and water so soft that it is a pleasure to
drink

Jim Webster