Interesting

I love lime. Just use whatever lime is readily available close to home. Just adding my worthless 2 cents to the pile.

Gypsum, Its magic!

I have completely renewed my pasture and garden.

When I moved to my current place ten years ago, the pastures were grown up almost to my head. It was full of briars, small trees, broomstraw, dogfennel, etc.

I bushhogged the entire piece and had the property limed. I contacted tree servers and took all the woodchips i could get. I let those chips compost for a year or two and began spreading them around thick in rough areas of the property.

I raised chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, etc. in mobile coops and allowed them to work and fertilize the ground. The birds helped out a ton and I could see results quickly.

I also plant crimson clover every fall and don't mow anything until after it has seeded out and died back. I also plant daikon/tillage radish.

I have seen where folks will bring it round bales of hay and lay that thick over rough areas, but my woodchips are free and have worked wonders.

Good luck!

This is more less what I'm doing now to my property. The wood chips really only work if you have Nitrogen, thats where your chickens really paid off. Currently Chicken manure is worth around $50 a Ton and a Ton goes a long ways. If you have any poultry farmers in the area that sell manure that would be my first stop after the soil test.

If you put wood chips down without added Nitrogen be prepared for the chips to lock most of your available Nitrogen up until they decompose. I'm going to mix chips with manure, let that compost then spread it.

Do you have a farmer near you with stall barn or bed pack manure. If so and he would be willing to sell it and apply it I would put say 20 to 30 tons per acre on this spring or summer and work it in. If you don't have equipment that can work in that much put less on. You will build OM faster that way and you will get NP and K as well. During the summer the bugs, worms and bacteria will break up the OM when the soil is warm. You can then start with any and all of the crops mentioned. They all build OM but some better than others but I nice load of manure is a good way to kick start your program. Manure is an interesting substance, it losens clay and helps bind sand, you want high levels of OM in your soils as it holds nutrients and also helps hold water.

Bryce

I would be weary of using cow/horse manure. I've heard that a lot of the hay that the animals feed on was treated with GrazeOn and other chemicals during the growth cycle. I guess the chemical doesn't cause the animal issues, but it is passed to the manure and when that is spread to gardens or other areas where broadleafs grow, they will die.

And don't spread cow poop on the garden you get weeds. Best to use horse.

Farmers in WI raise lot of broadleaf plants and spread lots of manure with no broadleaf plant deaths. Yes manure has weeds but there are more weedseeds laying in the foodplot area already so the extras are not going to be a major factor. Also plants like winter rye etc. are weed retardent plants. If manure is not available that is fine, just anticipate building OM with plants with 2-4 ton of dry matter per crop will take a long, long time to raise if OM is low.
Also if you plant several crops per year to have divsersity and do tillage, tillage breaks down OM faster and you lose more than if you can no-till.
I hope your soils are better, here were I live we have a lot of red clay with OM levels less then 2, basically a mineral type soil.
Bryce

Not much clay here

Guss, you got tht backwards.

Thank you for the explanation, Bryce!

Hybrid sorghum Sudan will make a lot of organic material especially if you can mow it a couple of times during the summer.

LOL, JUST finished spreading manure, THICK.

Have terrible soil here, been working on it 30 years.

Best thing I ever did was hogs. Moved pen a little every other year.
Went from 1" of soil to 6-10".

At least made some decent garden patches.

Below is a link to the aptly named Extreme Composting thread.
Watched this guy get going in real.time, it's insane.
100s of tons. Per year....

https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threads/extreme-composting.342651/

There is another neat twist to build up garden soil organic matter content and kill pathogens at the same time. It is accomplished by adding a whopping 12" or more of chopped green manure and some nitrogen working it in to the ground, watering and then covering with a thin layer of clear polyplastic sheeting tightly. The soil microbes quickly use up all the oxygen creating an anaerobic condition in the top 8-10" of soil. Over the course of several weeks soil borne pathogens (that may have been a burr under your saddle for years) are reduced to near zero since they cannot survive without oxygen.

You will be amazed at how well all your garden veggies and fruits do after this treatment.

I might have to.look.into this, thanks

Make sure it's not invasive vetch. I sprayed the vetch in my ditch tonight. I'm not sure what kind it is but I think I have the bad vetch. I think this is what I have:

https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Invasives/fact/CrownVetch

Some educated folks here ,good stuff .

While doing landscaping , one customer wanted Crown Vetch , only time I saw it other than some that grew wild in spots.
It was planted above her new pond, as a filter to slow the pond from filling with run off.
That was almost 60 years ago, and never knew how it worked , or what it did.

How to add organic matter to soil
use crop residues - chop and leave straw and not just crop roots or stubbles.
grow a cover crop or use green manures to feed the soil.
sow a mixed cover of deep-rooting grasses and herbs, which is particularly effective in compacted soil.

Many have mentioned their preferred crops, Legumes are the best, then grasses or mixes that do not need or require tillage. It will take good management and a good plan to plant crops you want for food for wildlife and enhance your soil, nutrients and OM. Clovers will do better than alfafa in your soil types unless you get the ph up over 6.5. One of the nice things about legumes like alfalfa is when they do into dormancy and freeze they stand up and don't wilt down like grass. There is quite a bit of decent winter feed there even in the snow for deer and other animals eating vegetation.
Using crops that grow a lot of root mass works well for OM increase and also a mix of shallow and deep rooting.
Bryce