#16 Protect Your Soil - Here’s How

Residual, what’s in the name?

Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching, and it is my pleasure to present this podcast about residual after grazing.

Nature is always striving for higher complexity and higher productivity; please keep this in mind.

We have been told that we need to leave ample residual as armor for the soil and have been shown thermometer readings in the Summer of bare soil, soil covered by vegetation, and soil covered with residue. 

I, myself, used to believe that leaving much residual was good for the soil, as it is logical that harvesting more of the total available forage to create more forage seems counterintuitive and feels like a bad thing. But when we consider the impact, this has on the rest of the property and on the individual plant and soil microorganisms, and leaf-to-stem ratio in the regrowth it all starts to make sense. We should consider the impact on the whole year and the future productivity of each decision we make.

I have students of Total Grazing being successful all around the world in different environments so rest assured that what I am going to explain is not only a theory but has been proven in practice for many years as it follows nature and basic plant physiology.

It is essential we know the difference between too much residual and enough residual and how to achieve it.  More important is to understand the role of close interplant spacing and numerous deep and strong roots, plus we need to understand how the excess shade from too much residual kills growing points and seedlings, which leads to larger interplant spacings and a weaker solar panel, lower stocking rates, less soil humus creation and lower future productivity than potential.

In this podcast, you will learn what creates closer spacings between desirable forage species, leafier pastures, more stockpiles in area, deeper and stronger roots with higher energy reserves, and higher humus more resilient soils.

1. What happens when we constantly do selective grazing to improve our animal's performance?

While, in theory, this is a good strategy as our livestock gets to select the best species and parts of species to get better nutrition, it does not consider the shading of growing points and new seedlings this causes.

Make your own observations, look at the growing points, which are close to the ground, and observe your interplant spacings. I have observed this larger interplant spacing by the death of growing points from too much shade when too much residual is left behind in all places that practice selective grazing that I have visited. This also happens under continuous grazing where we observe overgrazed and over rested plants in the same paddock, both are bad for individual plants as overgrazing is defined as re grazing a plant before it has fully recovered and has nothing to do with how much of the plant was harvested.

 2. What is more important? Lots of residual? Or strong roots with shorter interplant spacing?

A closer interplant spacing with more growing points per square yard will produce a better solar panel and better leaf to stem ratio (leafier pastures) which results in better soil holding capacity by the numerous and strong roots. 

Have you observed how litter is carried away by rain or wind? This happens more in areas where the interplant spacing is larger.

While liter is important, the interplant spacing and stronger roots are more important for soil health and productivity of a pasture. 

My Total Grazing students realize the importance of periodically removing 80-90% of available forage by grazing, to expose growing points and new seedlings to sunlight for further productivity and soil improvement.

3. Growing more plants per square yard and why is this important?

Do we want larger plants that are further apart? Or do we want more leaf per square yard created by closer interplant spacing?

We can get larger individual plants when shading the growing points by leaving too much residual when doing selective grazing, but our solar panel will be smaller, and we will create bare spaces between our plants which is easy to observe by separating the plants with your hands and looking at their bases. By doing Total grazing, which allows sunlight to penetrate to the growing points close to the base of the plants, we can improve our solar panel creating more leaves per square yard or acre. We need to remember that green leaf is what create energy through photosynthesis while brown leaves and stems consume energy through respiring. This is the reason that the leaf to stem ratio is so important.

Green leaves have much higher digestibility than stems (60-70% vs 30-40%) and give much higher animal performance than stems. We want more green leaf created per acre and my Total grazing students are aiming for that as it translates into higher profits and faster soil improvement.

4. Soil aggregates

Is what gives structure to our soils, it starts with glomalin (a glue formed by mycorrhizae that holds soil together) The higher the leaf to stem ratio, the higher the glomalin production will be.

We need net energy in our forage plants to increase, and this happens when the green leaf to stem ratio increases. Then, the energy produced by green leaf through photosynthesis is more than the energy consumed by the stems respiring which allows for higher productivity and root exudates which feed soil microorganisms to form even more glomalin. 

Conclusion and recap:

What really holds soil together are Strong and Fat roots that are closer together! 

Wind erosion and water erosion will carry away the litter, but numerous close and strong roots given by closer interplant spacing with a high leaf to stem ratio will hold soil together!

When you practice selective grazing all the time and leave more liter than necessary, the excess residual shades out growing points and seedlings which increases interplant spacing. This produces lower energy plants as more stems are left behind which keep on respiring and consuming energy reducing the energy reserves in the crown and roots. Now you know how to avoid it. 

If you are a Total Grazing student you know that when we achieve a Total graze, with 80-90% of harvest efficiency, we remove excess residue, allow sunlight to reach the growing points and seedlings, create a higher leaf to stem ratio in the regrowth, allows you to stockpile a larger area for the dry/Winter season, increases your stocking rate, creates more glomalin and recruits more seedlings of your best forage species to close those interplant spacings. 

Goodbye, make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, iTunes, or Youtube, you can also join us on the weekly email at www.rwranching.com/join