Biological Trials with our Neighbors — Regenerative Land Solutions

We’ve been working with our neighbors in Paradise Valley to trial biological treatment programs on their hayfields for a few years now, and have found some promising results.

*A biologically treated hayfield in Paradise Valley*

One of the first trials we established in the area was with a producer that had gravelly soils and wasn’t using fertilizer of any kind on his fields. Four years ago, we helped him get started using Provide and Revive and added fish hydrolysate into his program in the spring of 2020. Provide is a biological inoculant with a highly diverse and abundant spectrum of microbes, and Revive is a food source for the microbial population that helps to increase activity levels, specifically for the generally limiting fungi. Fish hydrolysate is a protein-based source of nitrogen and biological stimulant that is less subject to leaching and volatilization because it is slowly mineralized and made available to the plant gradually.

Since this producer adopted a biological fertility program he has seen a 25% increase in production each year. Granted, he previously used no fertilizer, he will have effectively doubled his hay production in the four years since he started working on his fertility program. On a 30 acre field where he used to get 40 roughly 1450 lb bales on his first cutting and 30 on his second cutting, this year he got 92 bales on his first cutting and 82 on his 2nd cutting. He believes about 10 of these bales can be attributed to the electric fence he put up in 2020 to keep the elk off his fields. But, he jumped from getting roughly 1.7 tons per acre in two cuttings to 4.2 tons per acre in two cuttings after adopting a biological approach.

He also saw his water retention improve drastically in the past four years. He remarked that he had problems getting his hay off this year due to reasons unrelated to his fields. So his water was off for about 2 weeks, and his fields never turned brown. In this summer’s heat and drought, 2 weeks without water would have put most folks using conventional fertilizer in a water deficit that they would not have been able to recover from.

Another producer down the road has an old 25 acre grass/alfalfa field that has been virtually untouched for at least 2 years. The field has a significant slope, fanning from the mountains behind his property. The soil is gravely at the top with more clay at the bottom, and it has good infiltration, but low water holding capacity. This year we established a biological trial with a control strip left untreated. The treated section got 1 gal/ acre of fish hydrolysate, 1 gal/ acre of Provide, and 1 lb/ acre of Revive.

We took samples in late June before the first cutting. We found a Total Fungi to Total Bacteria ratio of 0.87 on the control strip, and 3.90 on the treated section. Keep in mind this is one snapshot in time of a complex system. That said, alfalfa/grass should have a TF:TB ratio between 1 and 10, and the biologically treated sections fall within that balanced range, while the control strip is bacterially dominated. We also sampled production on the field and found that the treated side had 30% more grass and 61% more alfalfa than the control. It should be noted that we only tossed one hoop for either side into representative stands.

Another of our trials in the valley is on a 10 acre grass/alfalfa field that was seeded in 2017. We used a different 10 acre plot that was seeded with the same mix at the same time as our control plot. The control was treated with 40-40-10-10 every spring after seeding. The trial plot was treated with 1 gal/ acre of Provide and 1 lb/ acre of Revive in both 2020 and 2021. In 2021 he also applied 1 gal/ acre of fish hydrolysate. We took soil and tissue samples in late June this year before the first cutting and found a greater amount of nitrogen in the soil on the biologically treated plot. Our production sampling showed 27% less grass and 13% more alfalfa on the biological side, but as you can see below these sampling plots were apples to oranges. There was a lot more bare ground on the biological side, which was there before this trial started. There were obvious historical differences pre-trial in germination success on these two fields. Ideally you could start with a biological program in year one as biology is the major driver of germination and yields for the life of the field.