 South Dakota's educational effort to raise awareness about the importance of soil health continues. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service entered into a cooperative agreement with the South Dakota No-Tel Association and I grow South Dakota State University Extension for delivering these seminars with the latest soil health and productivity technology to South Dakota farmers and ranchers. Thank you. I grew up in the northeastern corner of the state of a little town called Crystal. About 30 miles south to Canada, 30 miles west to Minnesota, potatoes, sugar beets, wheat, edible beans, every now and then, sunflowers and canola. That's the sort of stuff I grew up with. A couple, about two months ago, I used to be a single parent to a Gordon Center that has a pheasant problem. So if you got a pheasant problem, I'd love to help you. No longer a single parent, got married about two months ago. She's very happy. And I'd like to think of myself as a walleye fisherman with a soil science problem. I spend my weekends chasing walleyes, guiding from Mitchell's Guide Service up on Delta's Lake so if anybody wants to trade some walleye fishing for some pheasant hunting, my contact info is right there. So I'm going to talk about managing saline soils through cropping systems. So this is the state of North Dakota. There was some work done in 2010 that estimated there's roughly 5.7, 5.8 million acres of our soils are adversely affected by salinity. When we look at that, that's roughly the size of Vermont. And this is what Vermont would truly look like if we superimposed out of North Dakota. So that's a big chunk of our state causing a lot of issues. That's where I spend most of my time working with farmers to manage these saline areas. So a lot of terms get thrown out. Salinity, sedicity, alkalinity, what does all that stuff mean? Salinity, we're talking about the salts. Sedicity, we're talking about too much sodium in the soil. Usually the common farmer lingo back home is they call the salty areas alkaline ground. Is that the same term down this way? Alkalinity is actually a term that should be used referring to pH with soils with the pH higher than 8.5 does a lot of nasty things, phosphorus gets tied up, iron gets tied up. So that sort of stuff. So when we say saline soils, we define that as having an electrical conductance or EC greater than four desiccimins per meter. Well, when the researchers test it, we do a test called the saturated paste. We take a chunk of soil, we add a little bit of water, we mix it around. Take a chunk of soil, add a little bit of water, mix it a little bit around, add some more water, keep mixing until it kind of looks like the stuff you get from Berry Queens, soft serve ice cream. Then they suction off the solution off of it and measure it. Well, our testing labs, that takes a lot of time to get the saturated paste going on. So what they do, they do one part soil, one part water, mix it up together. So chances are when you get that test back from your testing lab, it's that one to one number. To get it close to what that actual saturated paste is, we multiply that by two. Now that publication that got passed around by Anthony, there are some regression lines in there based on soil texture. It gets you a little bit closer to what that saturated paste of your EC would be, but multiplied by two, they'll get you pretty close. Usually in soils pH is less than 8.5, SAR, that stands for sodium absorption ratio. That's the test that we use to define if the soil is sodic or not. Our soils act a lot like a magnet. They got this negative charge caused by clays and organic matter. We have calcium magnesium, they got these plus two charges. So they help hold that soil together and it acts a lot like a magnet. That helps gives it structure, water can infiltrate, plant growths can grow down, it's a great thing. Now you take sodium, it has a plus one charge, but because of that plus one charge, it can only attach to one side of that soil surface. So when we get too much sodium, instead of having some of that soil structure, there's this dispersion effect. And it's like rush hour traffic in Chicago. Everything's going whichever way, soils get compacted, water doesn't want to infiltrate, stuff like that. So this sodium absorption ratio test is testing that ratio of calcium magnesium, that's what holds the soil together versus the sodium that causes that dispersion effect. Usually we see high pH soils in these areas. If you think you might have an SAR problem, look at the pH's. If they're over five or over eight, you might want to have that test drop. Then we have saline sodic soils and it's both. It has high salts and it also has sodicity issues. I'm going to focus most of this talk on salinity. Just wanted to mention the sodicity in case you think you might have this problem, have an idea of what's going on. So this is what sodicity looks like. It has this columnar structure, these biscuit tops, and it's just really hard and stuff doesn't want to infiltrate, but we usually don't see that at the top of the soil surface. Usually it's in our subsurface, six inches down, foot down, a couple feet down. So to really see if you have that issue, you need to take that shovel and take a look to see what that structure looks like. So with salts, it prevents that plant from taking up water. Usually in these saline areas we see it in our wet or lower areas of our field, so there shouldn't be adequate moisture, right? But the salt prevents that water from infiltrating into the plant. So what it really does is it's tricking that plant to thinking that a drought's going on. And when it comes to salt management, it comes down to water management. This is a research site that we had over in Carrington, center part of the state, and we got a little of those juniors. We got half an inch of rain or something like that in about 10 minutes, and this was all white. But after the rain, we have all these little white circles, those are individual raindrops they get. It dissolved the water. So these are soluble salts that we're talking about. And it even impacted it so hard that it kicked some of the salt up on top. And once it dried out, we see these salt deposits on our little kosher weeds. So we need five different things to have soil salinity. First thing is we need to have water. Since 93, 94, whatever, we've been pretty darn wet in our Dakota. I'm old enough to still remember 88 and 89 a little bit, but it's still kind of fuzzy in my head. So most of my experience with agriculture so far has been the wet soil. We also need water soluble salt. And for that we're talking about sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, calcium sulfate, that would be gypsums stuff that sheet rocks made out of magnesium sulfate that's Epsom salt, these salts dissolve easily in water. Now there's things like calcium carbonate or lime, that stuff doesn't dissolve in water. It takes a lot and a lot of water to move that stuff. That's why we know if you ever seen a soil pit and people and somebody's taken their acid bottle, looking for that stuff to fizz, they're testing for the line, and they're trying to get an idea of where that water table has a tendency to sit. Because it's been sitting there for 10, 20, 30,000 years, whatever. We also need a recharge area. That's where water enters the soil. And we need a discharge area. That's where ground water becomes surface water. That's where we see the salt spots. And as these knowing these landscapes and how they work is what it takes to really get down and manage these areas. And you also have to have area where evaporation is greater than infiltration. We have so evaporation and capillary rise are the salts conveyor belt. We have lots of salts, lots of minerals in our soil, but when it's down four or five feet, that isn't adversely affecting the planet. It's when they get brought up to the surface of the soil in that root zone that we start seeing these issues. So under the conventionally tilled system, we have a lot of evaporation. So that moves the salts up to the surface. That's the conveyor belt. Now with the no till system, I'm not saying you're going to necessarily fix it just by going no till, but you're having some mulch out there. So it's going to reduce the evaporation and you're going to have more infiltration. And when that water goes down, it dissolves the salts and leaches those salts down. So with capillary rise, we're talking about how water can move up the different size soil particles. When you go to McDonald's, you get a you get a straw you throw in your coke that that water level sits pretty darn close to what it is in your coke straw. Now if you go get a cocktail and you get those little tiny straws, look at where that that water level is inside the straw. And it's going to be a lot higher in reference to the coke straw. That's because it's a smaller pour. So it has more capillary rise. So things like clay, silty clays, that can raise water up where sand can't raise it up as much. Here when we look at a silt loam, it can raise the water table by about five feet. Whereas we're talking sand only about two feet. So there's a huge difference in soil textures. So this is what a saline seat looks like in my head. We have a recharge area up here. That's where the water is entering the soil. Then this SS, those are soluble salts. They get dissolved, they move down the soil. And then they hit an impermeable layer and then they start moving laterally. Now due to erosional processes, we usually see our finer textured soil sit at the bottom of the hill. So that's where that capillary rise comes into play. So it dissolves the salts, moves here, stuff moves up, water evaporates, the salts get left behind. So over time, the salts accumulate and cause these issues. A typical landscape that we see in North Dakota, hill top up here, looks all nice, down there at the discharge area, bottom of the hill, it's all white. Nothing wants to grow up there. I grew up with red tractors. And we're supposed to be unbiased with who we support. So there's my unbiased whoever tractor we support. Everyone after this is red. But we also see ditch effects, salinization in our state. That's where the recharge area is the ditch. And when there's water sitting in the ditch and it isn't draining, that water moves laterally out into the field. It dissolves the salts. And then we have evaporation and discharge here. And these areas run parallel to the road. This is one of our fields that I grew up far back. Got a road here. This was taken in 1997. Stuff looks okay. We fast forwarded 2009 and it doesn't look okay anymore. We got these white spots and they're running pretty darn close to parallel with that road. And that's classic ditch effect salinization. Old man sends me to college for six years or whatever, get an undergrad master's degree in soil science and he's like, can't help being managed these areas. And I'm trying to tell him it's all water management. We need to get water down. He took that in his mind and thinks, I need to go out with a river. We don't own a river on the Augustine Seed Farm. However, we have a chisel plow and when you put the booms up, it goes down a lot deeper, similar to a river. You can almost see the salt pop up right behind it. Because you got that evaporation going on and the salt, there's still a lot of salt down there and you're bringing it up to the top. Wetlands salinization. You see these white grains that go around wetlands. Similar effect what's going on with the ditch effect, but we don't have an impermeable layer. So the water goes both ways. So this is a random wetland. Northeast, the Devil's Lake a little bit, 1990. You can see it kind of looks like a kidney. A little wet. Fast forward to 97. Looks a lot wet. Now, we look at 2009 and we have this white spot and it almost perfectly mimics the shape of that water body. And that's because that water can go out whichever direction. We're going to switch gears a little bit and talk about salinity tolerances at different crops. That Dave Frans in publication, that's where I got most of this stuff. First thing to keep in mind, soybeans paint salt. This is what it looks like in EC of 0.3. Looks happy in EC of 3.9. Not so happy. 8.1, 11.3. It just got jacked out and by Goldberg it was tapped out. Nobody watched WCW. Barley, one of the more salt tolerant type things. Doesn't look too bad when the EC 0.5. Doesn't look too bad. 4.2, 8.3. Never seen some differences. 11.6. There's definitely some differences but something's growing out there. And this is the side-by-side comparison. Just a touch of salt with the barley and the soybeans. A lot more salt with barley and soybeans. So this is what the different crops look like based on salinity. On the x-axis we have our different levels of EC. That's the saturated piece that I was talking about. So when you get your numbers you need to multiply them by 2. On the y-axis we have our relative yield. So we got dry beans, corn and flax are almost identical. Those don't do work at dark. Elf-elfa, there's some elf-elfa varieties that are being sold as salt tolerant. It does better than what older elf-elfa varieties are but I don't think tolerant is the right word for it. But there is some stuff that the antibiotics aren't improving with it. Soybeans, I already told you that soybeans hate salt. However, sunflowers aren't too bad, canola isn't too bad. I grew up in beet territory so it's nice to see the beets are working. Barley and wheat, there are some of the better selections for these areas. Some of these salt tolerant forages, when it's paper white and that EC level is through the roof, these are the sorts of things you need to be looking at. Wild rye, tall wheat grass, russian wild rye, AC salt lager, western wheat grass. And when you plant that stuff, that's perennial cropping. Don't till it under, don't kill it, let the stuff grow. Something growing is using up the water and it's better than having nothing. Even in areas where you only have cocia or you only have foxtail barley growing, it's better than having nothing growing. Now you need to do some wheat control and in some of these areas farmers are going out and mowing that stuff down instead of going out with a cultivator or mowing out with some life is safe. Some moderately taller forages, when the EC is between 10 and 15, crested wheat grass, thick spiked wheat grass, these prairie core grasses and creeping foxtail, those do pretty good on wetter sites. Canada wild rye, buffalo grass. And now we're starting to get those moderately sensitive forages and these are kind of the levels where some of those covered if you're going to plant sunflowers or barley as a cover crop. That might be a little bit cheaper than this, I don't know off the top of my head, but these are some of those more salt sensitive types of crops. If you're playing around thinking about cover cropping, sometime you should Google Mandan ARS Dr. Leibing. He put this together a couple years ago, it's the cover crop chart. Kind of set it up like the periodic table, we have grasses, we have all our different broadleaves, and when we select one of those we get a lot more information on the characteristics of those different cover crops. The ones that I have, circled, barley, wheat, rye, trachea leaf, canola, mustard, beets, sunflower, sunflower, those are things in salt-tolerant cover crop mixes you should consider. So let's say we click on radishes. So left click, radish. This is what comes up. All sorts of information, cool season broadleaf, annual, high water use, so that's a good thing for salinity management. However, poor salinity tolerance. So that gives you what it might use for a gallery fee and some other things. We have the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network in North Dakota, and there's these weather sites all across the state. Every county has at least one, and a handful of counties have three or four. And when you go to this website, they have this nifty little tool that you can estimate the water use. So this is for 2013 at the Oaks Station. So our total rainfall was 23.64 in that time between the first of May and the 15th of October. And maybe I was a little early on that date, that was still ice fiction, the 5th of May that year. But we used almost 26 inches of rainfall with So we got a two-inch deficit, so we're drying down that soil. Now we look at sugar beets, uses a lot of water, still have a little bit of excess. Now we start getting the corn. We're almost at four inches of excess moisture. Soybeans, almost five inches. Potatoes, six and a half. Sunflowers, 7.7. Dry beans, almost nine. Wheat, nine and a quarter. Barling, almost a little over 11 inches of excess rainfall. There's some work done over at the Williston Research Extension Center, so now we're in the heart of the bucket over on the western end of the Montana border. Jim Stureka was looking at water use of different crops as well as fallow systems. It's weird having conversations with my dad and the neighbors growing up with that they used to fallow, and they fallowed to conserve water. Well they tilled today to dry down the soil. So soils magically changed 30 years ago? I don't know. But there is a short-term drying effect, but in the long run when that soil's fallow you're conserving water. The most efficient way to manage this water is by having something growing out there. And you can see that the waters are both the same. Then we get to the middle of July. That crop system is really drying down the soil whereas that fallowed system we're accumulating water. So I set up a couple different scenarios. We're looking at planting cover crops the 5th of August, or we have emergence on the 5th of August, or we have emergence on the 5th of September. And again this is over at the Oak Station. Barley, if we planted the 5th of August, and I assume the 15th of October for most of these things, because we'll still see barley, soy, or not soy, barley, and sugar beads, radishes, those things will stay green well into November in most areas of North Dakota. So 15th of October is the dead date, we're calling that. Barley would use about eight inches, wheat a little less than eight, sunflowers, about seven and a half, dry beans seven inches. Soybeans almost six inches, corn a little bit less, sugar beads a little bit less. So that's the water that could be used yet in that six week period or that eight week period. And if we look at the 5th of September now that water use goes down quite a bit. Barley is about three inches, wheat 2.64, dry beans 2.4, and so on. So what if we planted winter wheat harvested timely, usually in North Dakota, that would be the end of July. So we have a week, we have time to go all and put some cover crops down, and we put some cover crops behind it. So that total rainfall was about 23 and a half inches, winter wheat would use about 14 and a half inches. So we have that surplus now of nine and a quarter. Well, maybe we should plant some cover crops out there. Let's plant something salt tolerant because we have some salt issues. So let's throw some sunflowers in there. That would be used about seven and a half inches. So now we got about two inches of excess moisture versus nine and a quarter. So that isn't using up all the water, but you're in a lot better situation as you left that ground fowl. And we're getting a mix of a broadleaf and a grass. That wheat's growing all year long and we're throwing some sunflowers in at the end of the year. So we're adding some diversity to this. Now let's say we're looking at dry beans. Now we're harvesting early September. Well we would have had about eight inches of excess moisture and then let's throw some barley in for a mix. We're six inches of excess moisture but that's still all three inches better than what you would have. So managing these saline seats, it comes down to knowing the landscape. Where is the water coming from? Where's the water going? There's been a lot of work done with alfalfa and they've been able to fix these areas with alfalfa. One of the reasons is it uses a lot of water but it also has a really deep rooting structure. So it acts almost like a dam and prevents that water from going over that salty spot. Now where this used to be white you're not going to get that alfalfa to grow. So in that white spot that's where you want to you want to plant those those salt taller cover crop mixes or maybe you want to have some of those those highly tolerant forages, the western wheat grass, the ac salt water, those sorts of things. And there's my red tractor again. And the same thing we see with the ditch effect. We need to intercept the water and prevent that lateral movement out into the field because if we don't prevent that lateral movement to water that's going to keep going out and I'm going to lose a row of sunflowers every year out there. And the same thing with that wetland salamization management is trying to contain it so it doesn't spread. So I got some farmers now that are starting to look at look at doing this and some of them are practicing it where they're cropping most of the field like they normally would. However when they're in these salty areas they're starting to plant buffer strips of alfalfa or maybe just cover crops. But in these really high saline areas that's where they're putting in the ac salt landers or if it's low enough they're planting some of those salt tolerant cover crop mixes. Something with some sunflowers, some sugar beets, some barley, something like that. So this is some stuff over at the Carrington Research Extension Center. I was there for four years before moving off to Minot. This is one of our research sites. The thing that we have going on here is we are just dealing with a saline seed. We're also dealing with the ditch effect. So this is a two-headed monster that we're managing. That salt is pretty much parallel to the road so we know it's ditch effect salinization and this is up a little bit higher than down there. So ideally to manage this where it's good that's where you want to put your regular crop rotation. Where it's not so good that's where you want to start planting those salt tolerant things. Maybe some alfalfa something to dry down the water because if we don't contain it and manage it now it's only going to get worse next year. So I want to point out there's this tree here. So this is looking down to the southeast. So there's that tree right there. So when we first started managing this in 2009 the ec levels were 22, 21, something like that. It was almost paper white. There's not even kosher foxtail barley growing out there. So that stuff is pretty nasty. Now we fast forward to 2012 and there's that tree again that we got some stuff growing. So we're doing some reclaiming. We're moving that ground back in the right direction. Now this is just foxtail barley in this picture but there was nothing growing there before. So I know that we've improved it and with measuring the soil salinity when right here was 22 now it's down to like a 13. Still aren't going to really get anything on a cash crop but we're improving the land. So like I said before we've got a recharge area here. Our ditches are a recharge area. White spot that's where the discharge area is. And this is what our stuff looked like. We're evaluating the salinity tolerances of different cover crop mixes, different Delfelfas, things like that. And what's going on is we're managing that recharge area so it doesn't discharge. And if we were to also try to manage that ditch effect salinization we'd move it in a better direction faster yet. So we're only tackling one of the one of the monsters, not both of them. Just wanted to mention tile quit. It does work. It's very expensive. I try to work with farmers to do their cropping management first and this is a last resort. There's a lot of issues that goes with it with water quality and whatever else but it does work. This is some work done by egg vise. There's soil testing lab in North Dakota. On our x-axis we have different GPS locations. On our y-axis we have different salts. Now this is in millimoles. That's a one to one so we need to multiply that by two actually. The red is 2002 and they definitely have some salinity issues. 2006 a little bit better. 2011 it's it moved in a pretty good direction. But that's in nine years about a thousand bucks an acre. Was cover crops a lot cheaper and we've moved it in a better direction a lot greater. So we went from a 22 down to about a 13 in the worst areas in like four or five years. This is nine years to only move it that much. And also too if you put tile in the salt doesn't get imagined and disappear. You need snowfall, you need rain, you need those leaching events to take the salt out. So in summary salinity is caused by excessive water that brings salts into the root zone. Salinity management is water management. Salts move up with the water they move down with the water. As we dry down the soils those salts will move down with it. We need to think about the landscapes. We see those white spots in the lower areas of our field and that's where the grain monitor goes down to nothing and that's what annoys us. But the problem's coming from someplace else so we need to find the source of it in order to fix the symptoms. Tail hitching crops manage water however evaporation can make your soils more prone to salinization erosion and you're going to lose organic matter. Crops utilize more water than tail hitch and have greater benefits to the soil. When you're doing these salinity management things and you keep on top of that salinity when that number starts coming back up don't plant soybeans, plant wheat, plant something more salt tolerant than those areas. With that are there any questions? Is EC something that you can get on your soil samples from like Geigweis or somebody like that? Yeah it's just another box to check for the most part. What was the question again? The question was is EC something that's easily soil tested and every soil test form to fill out that I've seen has had EC on it. I'd be surprised if a soil testing lab didn't offer that. Yes sir? If you were going to get that block. Okay the question was if you're going to get that blocking effect with the alfalfa how many years to fix it am I right? Okay so that stuff that we did that was in a matter of four years. We took it from a 22 or a 21 down to like a 13 and the worst and we reclaimed an area that was nine acres of really bad soil down to about four now and that's a couple years old it's gotten better yet. I'm not carrying it anymore so I don't have the most up to date yet. There's a bunch of work done in the late 70s with alfalfa and salinity management. They were fixing these areas in five to seven years but it also depends upon what the water area well how much rainfall you get all those sorts of factors. Alfalfa uses a lot of water but it's also one of the easiest things to drown out so it's kind of a catch 22 there but it's the king water user. How do you know where how do you know where those problem areas are coming from? A lot of it is just gut instinct when you're sitting down at the field looking where the high ground is because that water chances are it's coming towards you. That's how I've gone about doing it and I'm sure I haven't been right all the time but that's where I look at it. Now if you're talking like that ditch effect when you see that white spot running perfectly parallel with the road no question is that coming from the ditch. Now when we're talking those seeps it's a matter of where do you think the water's coming from you know and it isn't like you just have one straight hill going that way you know you got a whole three-dimensional landscape and so you know it can't be just one strip that way it's got to you know encompass the whole area from where that water could be coming from. Now with those high salt tolerance cover crops is that something you have to take off the ground to move the salt away from that so do you have to cut it bail it move it away or is that just being utilized by the plant? The plants don't take it up if they don't have to. My understanding of it is if you bail it you're not going to necessarily be translocating the salt it's it moves with the water if the only reason why the salt levels in your soil test went down is because they've been translocated deeper in the salt. There are some plants that accumulate salt. So you never actually get rid of the salt it just goes deeper. It's still there but it's not adversely affecting your soils and that's why you need to stay on top of those soil tests when those numbers start coming up again you gotta okay we need to start planting we need to go back to being on top of it. Yes sir? When you're sampling your soil how deep you want to go? When you're sampling your soil how deep you want to go? Usually most of the stuff it's just zero to six that's the stuff we're worried about. Now if you're fighting the salt a six to 24 seeing where that salt is is a good indicator to see are you making progress because if it's decreasing up here it should be increasing down here but when you have those two different soil tests you can actually see get an idea of how much you've you've moved from up here to down there. Yes sir? Did they try adding lime to bind the salt up? The only way to remove salts is with management is with water management. There's all sorts of products out there that are supposed to do miracle things I call them snake oils. Iowa State has one heck of a website called the Iowa State Compendium of Non-Conventional Soil Amendment something like that when I get questions about whatever product I'm not familiar with first place I go was that and it's a great source of information on various products if something's been researched if something's been researched chances are it has it there. As for like lime in that lime isn't going to affect the salt because it doesn't dissolve now if you have a pH issue lime is a good thing to have we don't have pH issues for the most part in North Dakota now one of the things to fix some of those sonic soils is adding gypsum calcium sulfate because you're adding calcium you know instead of having rush hour traffic in Chicago maybe it's more like Sioux Falls or whatever because you're adding plus two ions to there and the problem with that is if it's so or if it's sailing to you're adding more salt to the system say that again and it's not going away and you need to stay on top of that water management to move those salts down unless you're going to open up the salt mine yes sir is it a valid approach to install tile line to manage it a lot of that's been done in North Dakota and that that data I showed you is one of the success stories of it it works there's right now it runs about a thousand bucks an acre in in the regular valley so it's expensive but it does work and there are other issues that goes with it environmental all that sort of stuff I'm not here to talk about that but it does work yes sir when you're succeeding the cover crops in the affected area how far beyond the affected area you want to go in order to soak up some of that moisture that's coming that's draining down from the upslope so the question is you're planting some cover crops only salt areas how wide should you really put it the stuff that I've been reading and it's highlighted in that that publication oh 40 50 feet something like that so excuse me you should be able to yeah and and like so you plant the cover crops and what you think is the bad area you go on with some corn you got some really bad looking corn look at where that is and maybe kill that off and plant some cover crops in an area like that you know it it does vary from situation to situation if you want to get on top of it as fast as you absolutely can plant the whole field to alfalfa but do you have dairy do you have this together do you have a market for the alfalfa versus a soybean so those are some of the considerations you have to take into account thank you guys