CONSERVATION CORNER
A weekly blog for all things conservation
 By BRIAN ZEIDNER
Over the summer I shared some of my hay-making experiences with you. I wrote about using nitrogen fertilizer, commonly known as urea, on hay fields. Many hay producers really want to know — Is it worth it? To answer that question, we must measure the quantity and quality of the harvest. As noted previously, my first cutting off-farm, non-fertilized fields produced less than two round bales per acre, while my on-farm nitrogen-fertilized ground produced 5.5 round bales per acre. The increase in the amount of hay certainly seems substantial. I also measured the quality of the hay using forage tests. I am raising beef cows and although there are many forage considerations, I look closely at three different measures on my forage tests, Crude Protein (CP), Neutral Detergent Fiber (NDF) and Energy (TDN). Although I reference these factors there are many other measurements on forage tests that a professional nutritionist may use to make recommendations.
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 By: Kevin Brown, Ag Team Leader
Greetings. I am not necessarily going to go in this order, but these will be the topics of discussion. And I will ramble on in between topics. First topic, requests. We have had this column for a couple years now. We have hit many topics. We have heard good things about the column, and I want to continue with it, but truthfully, I am running low on topics. We have many topics that we have knowledge about- solar, electric vehicles/power equipment, fossil fuels, anything environmental, ponds, insects, streams, dirt and gravel roads, forests, crop production, and the list goes on. Please contact us with what your interests are. You can hit us up on Facebook, our website www.bccdpa.com , or call us directly. We are here for conservation, but more importantly, education. That is our passion.  By: Kevin Brown, Ag Team Leader
So, in part one I outlined how easy things are to garden this way. I would like to explain a few reasons why in this article. The comment I finished with last week was that most people plant too early. Now, if you are having great luck with your garden, then don’t change anything. However, if you aren’t, this could be one reason. I looked up planting times for our area for different things and they were way later than what I have seen people plant at.  By Kevin Brown, Ag Team Leader
For those of you out there who like to be controlled all summer long by your garden, feel free to only read the next sentence. If your routine for gardening every year is to rototill it two or three times, then pick rock, and then pick weeds all summer long; not to mention watering every couple days, this article is not for you. This article is for us lazy people who really like to have a garden, but like to do things other than continually tending to it. I met a person yesterday at our Green Career Day at Sunfish Pond who heard my talk and wanted to know more. She wanted a garden, but not all the hard work that came with it. I said, “Problem solved”. But, if you want to really do a great job with it, the time to start is NOW. |
AuthorsVarious staff at the Bradford County Conservation District Archives
April 2025
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