Kenai Soil & Water Conservation District
Goals: Kenai Soil & Water Conservation District, in collaboration with NRCS Alaska, UAF Cooperative Extension and Kenai-area farmers, is carrying out a 3-year project (2016-2018) to demonstrate the value of a multi-species cover crop for soil health and to encourage wider adoption of this practice.
Method: The project compares changes in soil health from three successive years of growing a multi-species cover crop mixture (oats, field pea, buckwheat and forage radish, inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi) fertilized with 1) synthetic fertilizer or 2) organic fertilizer based on fish bone meal.
Preliminary Findings: Soil health scores (lab data) increased in all study plots after one season. Organic matter was higher in plots fertilized with fish bone meal and organic amendments in both Year 1 and Year 2. In Year 1, plots with synthetic fertilizer produced significantly more biomass than those with organic fertilizer. In Year 2, both treatments produced equivalent amounts of biomass. This cover crop mix has good potential for use as forage in the late fall, a valuable side-benefit to farmers with grazing animals.
Challenges: Keeping moose and cattle off this good forage has proven challenging. Unfortunately, two of the four participating farm sites were dropped from the project in 2017 after animals consumed the data.
Left: Measuring biomass at one of the Kenai sites, October 11, 2017.
Top Middle: One of the Kenai sites fertilized and ready to plant, July, 2016.
Top Right: UAF Cooperative Extension agent Casey Matney and District summer hire Madeleine Michaud collect baseline soil samples for the Kenai District’s Cover Crops and Soil Health Project in June, 2016.
Bottom Left: Close-up of cover crops at a Kenai site, Sept. 2, 2016.
Bottom Right: Green forage at a Kenai site, October 11, 2017.
