OFR21: Waste to Worth Manure and Mulch Project with Karla Melgar Velis

Karla Melgar Velis Author

10/26/2021 Added

11 Plays

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In this video, Karla Melgar Velis shares research on utilizing manure and cedar mulch as a soil amendment.

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[00:00:00.000](upbeat music)
[00:00:10.840]Very much during the last few years,
[00:00:13.000]and it's becoming a problem
[00:00:13.833]because it's limiting on nutrient availability,
[00:00:17.220]and water availability for other plant species,
[00:00:21.700]and for pastures and foreign growth.
[00:00:24.710]So right now,
[00:00:26.560]cedar constitutes about 22% of forest area in Nebraska.
[00:00:31.600]So that's quite a bit of
[00:00:35.630]percentage compared to other species.
[00:00:39.260]And then another issue:
[00:00:41.620]it's not really an issue
[00:00:42.710]but animal production is very big in Nebraska,
[00:00:46.550]as we all know.
[00:00:48.590]Farms and ranches constitute about 92% of the states' land,
[00:00:53.330]and what actually is the problem here
[00:00:56.210]is that animals produce a lot of manure
[00:01:00.260]that
[00:01:01.440]is tricky to handle
[00:01:03.140]because you get this large amount,
[00:01:05.040]and what farmers usually do is they apply it on land,
[00:01:09.570]that it's close to their farms,
[00:01:11.180]but sometimes you get so much
[00:01:13.050]that you need to find a way to get rid of it somehow.
[00:01:17.330]And it's threatening to just leave it there
[00:01:20.540]because it's contaminated water.
[00:01:24.610]So, what we are trying to do here is
[00:01:28.290]find ways in which these two products
[00:01:31.160]that are considered waste can be used,
[00:01:34.300]and we can actually give some value to them.
[00:01:38.610]So, manure is very rich in nutrients
[00:01:41.970]that are important for crops like nitrogen, phosphorous,
[00:01:46.800]potassium and many other properties.
[00:01:50.460]And cedar mulch actually
[00:01:54.360]might increase
[00:01:57.670]water retention.
[00:01:59.040]It can improve soil physical properties in biological
[00:02:05.140]dynamics in the soil.
[00:02:08.620]So, overall our objective here is
[00:02:11.670]to demonstrate the soil health, environmental
[00:02:14.770]and economic benefits of applying manure and red cedar
[00:02:19.450]for
[00:02:21.040]crops.
[00:02:23.670]So the way we set up these experiments,
[00:02:26.500]we started during 2019
[00:02:29.980]in two,
[00:02:31.260]in four research sites, sorry.
[00:02:33.830]Those were located in Ainsworth, Pierce, Brule
[00:02:37.817]and Saint Paul.
[00:02:39.810]And then during 2020, we did those treatments again
[00:02:43.780]in those sites,
[00:02:44.613]and we added two more sites in Julian and Overton.
[00:02:49.990]So we set up our experiments to...
[00:02:53.540]We separated plots
[00:02:55.130]that were about 20 feet wide,
[00:02:58.310]350 feet long.
[00:03:00.600]And we randomly applied one of the treatments to each.
[00:03:04.340]So the treatments were manure, manure and woodchips,
[00:03:09.250]or woodchips only.
[00:03:11.260]And then we also had control plots
[00:03:13.080]where the farmer applied - whatever nutrients he applied -
[00:03:18.310]in the rest of his field.
[00:03:19.650]So, if he did a certain amount of fertilizers
[00:03:23.540]in the rest of the field, that's what that plot would hold.
[00:03:28.000]And we compared all of our treatment plots
[00:03:31.340]to that control plot.
[00:03:35.980]The first of the sites was located in Saint Paul
[00:03:39.810]and we had silt loam soils there.
[00:03:43.140]And you can see on the screen,
[00:03:44.480]we applied this rate of manure in this site.
[00:03:48.650]And the way we calculated
[00:03:50.160]how much manure and woodchips we were applying is,
[00:03:54.170]as you can see in the picture,
[00:03:56.320]we had this tarp and we have the application tractor
[00:03:59.470]go over it,
[00:04:00.303]and then we weigh that tarp
[00:04:03.100]with the amount of manure and woodchips that it had.
[00:04:05.840]And that allows us to know...
[00:04:09.010]Well, we can project that into how many tons per acre
[00:04:12.360]of manure we were applying.
[00:04:17.550]In Pierce, we used cattle slurry and woodchips,
[00:04:21.880]and we had sandy loam soils.
[00:04:26.290]Ainsworth had sandy loam soils
[00:04:28.430]and we applied dry cattle manure and woodchips.
[00:04:33.790]Then in Brule, we had fine sandy loam soils.
[00:04:37.810]And what's different about this site is
[00:04:40.160]that woodchips were not easily obtainable,
[00:04:43.240]so we didn't wanna make an extra effort,
[00:04:46.080]so we had coal ash from a sugar beets processing company
[00:04:51.150]that's located in Scottsbluff
[00:04:53.670]and sugar beet is also known to have
[00:04:58.390]very good nutrients for the soil.
[00:05:01.540]And it depends on how it was processed,
[00:05:03.850]but it has certain amounts of carbon
[00:05:06.960]that's very useful to the soils.
[00:05:09.350]And it can also improve physical properties.
[00:05:13.030]So we wanted to try this out in this site.
[00:05:17.330]Then in Julian we had silt loam soils
[00:05:20.980]and we applied swine slurry and woodchips.
[00:05:25.660]And in Overton,
[00:05:26.750]we had dry cattle manure and woodchips.
[00:05:32.530]So the information we were interested in collecting
[00:05:35.860]was basically we wanted to see soil physical properties,
[00:05:40.230]and to do that we took samples for bulk density,
[00:05:44.590]which is basically
[00:05:46.940]the mass of soil that you can fit in a certain volume.
[00:05:51.760]And that's very important to know
[00:05:55.080]because when you have a too-high bulk density,
[00:05:57.660]that can be limiting to the growth
[00:06:01.910]of the roots of the plant.
[00:06:03.880]So, it's basically
[00:06:07.110]a measure of how compacted the soil can be.
[00:06:10.950]Then sorptivity is the amount of time
[00:06:14.660]that the water takes to be absorbed by the soils.
[00:06:18.870]So we did a test for that, too, in all of the sites.
[00:06:22.940]And in terms of the soil chemical properties,
[00:06:26.980]we evaluated soil organic matter, pH, nitrogen, phosphorus
[00:06:31.250]and potassium on a
[00:06:34.120]zero to four inches depth.
[00:06:37.620]And we collected from the farmers their crop yields
[00:06:41.680]so we could compare among the plots.
[00:06:45.500]And here's a little picture of our sampling process.
[00:06:51.770]The first picture is how we collected the chemical analysis,
[00:06:54.570]and the one on the bottom is the sorptivity test.
[00:07:02.560]Some of our preliminary results and conclusions:
[00:07:06.690]for Saint Paul in the top layer of the soil,
[00:07:09.540]the chemical properties that actually increased
[00:07:13.460]in our treatments were nitrates.
[00:07:15.410]So both years, nitrates were higher in the plots
[00:07:19.850]that had manure,
[00:07:22.161]and in the second year manure plus woodchips.
[00:07:25.750]And during the first year,
[00:07:27.270]we had a higher amount of phosphorus
[00:07:30.520]in plots with manure, woodchips and manure plus woodchips
[00:07:33.950]compared to control plots.
[00:07:38.723]And then in Pierce,
[00:07:40.220]this is kind of interesting to see, I think,
[00:07:42.870]the pH during the first year
[00:07:45.610]was higher in the plots that had cattle slurry
[00:07:49.090]and cattle slurry plus woodchips.
[00:07:51.760]And then the second year,
[00:07:53.240]those plots were significantly lower pH.
[00:07:57.840]Then we also had an increase in solar organic matter
[00:08:01.210]in the second year of the study
[00:08:02.660]in plots where we applied our treatments.
[00:08:08.780]In Ainsworth,
[00:08:10.010]there was an increase in pH, solar organic matter,
[00:08:13.470]nitrates and phosphorus during the first year.
[00:08:17.160]But we didn't see any differences among plots
[00:08:20.700]during the second year of the treatment.
[00:08:26.180]A very similar situation in Brule,
[00:08:29.070]where all those parameters were higher
[00:08:31.780]in our treatment plots.
[00:08:33.670]But the second year we observed no differences.
[00:08:38.315]In Julian, there were no differences between plots,
[00:08:42.800]treatment plots and control plots.
[00:08:45.730]And the same thing happened in Overton.
[00:08:51.750]Then in terms of physical properties,
[00:08:54.220]bulk density was higher during the first year in Brule
[00:08:59.020]in the plots that we had coal ash and coal ash plus manure.
[00:09:03.540]So, probably those higher bulk densities are due to
[00:09:06.640]application of coal ash.
[00:09:09.420]And then the other side showed no differences
[00:09:12.300]in bulk density.
[00:09:15.726]Sorptivity in Ainsworth was higher during the first year
[00:09:20.530]in the plots that had woodchips and woodchips and manure.
[00:09:25.420]But the differences were not present
[00:09:27.360]in the second year of the data.
[00:09:30.500]And then during the second year,
[00:09:32.070]Saint Paul had higher sorptivity,
[00:09:34.720]and Overton had higher sorptivity in the treatment plots
[00:09:37.910]compared to the control plots.
[00:09:43.628]In yield, the first year that we collected data from sites,
[00:09:48.790]there were no differences
[00:09:51.320]between the treatment plots and control plots,
[00:09:53.740]except for Brule
[00:09:55.878]where the yield was lower
[00:09:58.870]in the plots that had coal ash.
[00:10:01.890]Then during the second year in what I've collected so far
[00:10:05.890]shows that there's an increase of yield in plots
[00:10:09.934]that had manure and then fall by woodchips,
[00:10:13.400]then fall by control and then manure plus woodchips.
[00:10:17.970]No differences in Pierce and in Brule.
[00:10:20.680]We had higher yields in plots with manure,
[00:10:24.220]but plots with just coal ash were still
[00:10:29.040]a little lower than control plots.
[00:10:35.100]So in general, we can say that manure and woodchips
[00:10:38.450]have very good potential to supply nutrients
[00:10:41.350]like nitrogen and phosphorus,
[00:10:44.100]if they are applied to adequate rates.
[00:10:47.240]And then solar organic matter had
[00:10:49.530]an increase in two out of the six sites,
[00:10:51.630]and that's a very good thing.
[00:10:53.970]We could probably see that increase
[00:10:56.360]if we keep doing,
[00:10:58.430]if we keep applying woodchips.
[00:11:01.710]Then crop yield was not negatively affected
[00:11:05.030]by substituting inorganic fertilizers for organic sources.
[00:11:11.140]And it was actually higher in two of the sites.
[00:11:17.430]So with that, I'll be taking any questions if you have any.
[00:11:21.840]Thank you very much.
[00:11:24.027](upbeat music)

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OFR21: Waste to Worth Manure and Mulch Project with Karla Melgar Velis

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