Worn out soil

I have 11 1/2 acres that was farmed to death and being hilly all of the top soil washed to the bottom of the hills. I've been cutting it since I bought it in 1997 and it's growing pretty good grass on it now. At first it was 10 foot tall weeds and saplings. I can get cotton seed hulls from a gin not to far away all that my 16' trailer will hold for $50.00. would this help and be good if I spread it over where I want to have a garden and till it in? I know I need to take a soil sample to my county ag office for testing but thought this might help. what do you farmers think? Thanks for your advice.

Stuff like straw, hulls, tree leaves, etc are organic matter.

But they don't contain much nutrition. They will use up a years worth of nitrogen to break themselves down into humus and stuff. (Look up carbon to nitrogen ratios.....) so your grass plants will be starving for N.

Fresh manure would be better.

Getting the hulls, and a load of manure, and mixing in a pile and let it compost for a year, would be -really- good. The carbon from the hulls and the N from the manure would make a really rich ready to go product for you.

Your mowing and letting the clippings die and decompose is probably doing as much as bringing in the hulls would do? Feeding the grass you have growing N,P, and K along with small amounts of sulfur, boron, and zinc would probably grow you more organic matter faster than the hulls would provide any? Comnercial fertilizer or manure can be used.

Rebuilding top soil is a long deal, it depends where you want to get to and how fast you want to get there. Tillage in the south tends to break down organic matter faster than you can haul it in, so if you spread hulls, and make 5 passes working it on, in 3 years your soil might be poorer than letting things grow and list go with the clippings? Its about how the carbon gets 'burned out of' the soil as you stir it.

I should note as a Minnesota resident I'm not familiar with cotton seed hulls, so I might not understand what they offer for soil building, if someone else has a better idea. Up here with our long cold winters our organic matter does not disappear very fast, so we can be much more agressive with tillage, and so forth.

Paul

I too am making dirt for flowers in old gravel pit. I use things that are FREE to make dirt. Tree trimmer needs a place to get rid of wood chips. Stump grinding with dirt. Horse poo, grass clipping, leafs. Blend them together with top soil , makes good dirt for flowers. Lot of time, hundreds of tons. Longer it sits the better. Findings the more wood makes better mulch. Poo adds amoria.

Might be quicker to dig it out of the bottom of the hill and haul it back to the top ?

Just wondering how clean is that material? When you buy hay straw etc you open yourself up for a new crop of weeds. Organic matter is great but if it was me I think about composting first
There is also in the fall a lot of cities collect leaves makes great bedding also look around there might be some horse guy's looking for a place to haul manure. One thing I've found to be a great soil builder is red clover don't have to do anything fancy just spread it over top it's amazing how it mellows ground out

Local rock & gravel place has a sign in their office that they charge $XX (forgot the amount) per ton for landscapers to dump their trimmings and clippings on a compost pile. They turn it into compost and sell it back to the landscapers and gardeners.

NOTE: Many landscapers are always looking for places to dump trimmings because they are illegal, don't live in that city/town so they can't go to the landfill, which is for residents only, and commercial landfills cost too much.

Our top soil was formed through thousands of years of dead plant matter working into the ground without tillage. It can not be built back up to where it was in our lifetime but we can help it out. Adding organic matter does help but like Paul said the nitrogen will be used up in the decomposition process. Through the years we have buried a few farm building sites on this farm. Some of the burial was done right, with the topsoil pushed back over the top of the trench and some was not done right where the soil from down below with no organic matter ended up on top of the trench. This heavy slimy yellow clay soil from down deep didn't grow much at all for crops so as an experiment I layered it heavy with manure and seeded alfalfa. Three years later the alfalfa winter killed so I plowed it up and put a crop in. The crop planted over the trenches looked just as good as the other crops. It did not yield as well but at least it looked good. My assumption is the manure added some organic material and the alfalfa roots went down deep, opening the soil and fixing nitrogen. When the alfalfa roots decomposed voids were left in the soil where the roots used to be. Come to think of it, some of the farmers who use cover crops here in NWIA use what they call a tillage turnip in the cover crop mix. A tillage turnup grows like crazy and sends a big old tap root into the ground. When the turnip dies it leaves a hole in the ground where the root used to be and the decayed root helps to add organic matter. Just a few thoughts.

Do the soil test and talk to the county extension agent. Also be careful how you plant so the topsoil you do get at the top of the hill stays at the top of the hill.

My buddy and I have been trying to garden a few acres of worn out grazed out eroded clay for a few years now. We've hauled in stuff, but the most bang we've gotten for the buck and work/time has been to grow the organic matter and disk it back in. It would barely grow weeds when we started. Lime and fertilized according to soil tests, grew sorghum which is cheap, made 10 feet of standing mulch to turn under, planted elbon rye and turnips in the winters, turned it under. Is now loosening up and growing pretty good crops. We are still working on it, considering everything we can put in it a plus, but it seems like the most efficient way we've found to build it was to grow the mulch in place....

Danny I have an older New Holland big round baler that doesn't make as nice of looking bale as the newer ones. As I don't want to sell something that does not look good-I take the left over bales and simply unroll them on the poorer soil. I can sure tell the difference the next year-- the grass comes right up thru them and is greener than anything around it. Seems to help control broadleaf weeds Good Luck with whatever you decide to do.

just watch your tillage; always plant right behind your tillage or all the organic matter will be at the bottom of the hill. i have a rule about tillage, 'any tillage done has to be replanted that day'!

My garden was much like what your ground is now when I started top of an eroded hill that wouldn't grow hardly anything, now its the most fertile piece of ground in the area.I subsoiled it added chicken,goat,cow manure,lime,
kelp,Planters II and wood ashes.Also grow Crimson Clover as a cover crop every Winter.I mulch much of my garden with old hay the cows and goats 'wasted' in the Winter when I fed them,no waste to it they turned marginal hay into great fertilizer.My squash vines are chest high and I haven't added a thing to them this year since I planted and tilled in the Crimson Clover.Cotton seed hulls should be really good I would think.Building up the organic matter in the soil is the #1 thing to do.

A college takes chips from tree trimmer to hear with.

I don't understand this one but would you not take soil and leaf tests to see what is needed for the crop your growing? Like soil is deficient in nitrogen so why would you add magnesium??? I think I would try to pin it down better you would not plant hay on 4.0 ph soil with out lime