Setup Mix vs Set up Perennial Mixes

Linnburn uses both Setup mixes and Setup Perennial Mixes.

Perennial grasses, lucernes, herbs and clovers are expensive if you plant them too soon you are wasting your money especially when you have not changed your soil environment. Grass does not allow a lot of annual cover crops to grow very well. So if you introduce grass to early in your regeneration process it is like playing chess and your king is in the corner and you have no protection and your opponent has many powerful pieces… essentially your options are limited.

You are not going to regenerate challenged soil quickly by going from perennial rye-grass and clover to a few annuals, lots of different perennial grasses and lots of different clovers especially if you have been using synthetic fertilizers or soil feedings that are biological.

The above may be hard to understand but grass to grass and clover to clover is not introducing diverse roots that reach further into the soil profile allowing air and water to get further into the soil profile.

What we want to do is introduce diverse roots (affordable cover crops – typically annual or bi-annual seeds) and diverse green solar panels above the ground that take energy from the sun and through photosynthesis turn carbon dioxide into liquid carbon that go out the roots as root exudates feed bacteria and fungi.

These micro – organisms are being signaled by the plants to provide certain minerals and carbon is the currency to do so in the underground economy.

When we do this then life and carbon is being increased further into the soil profile and when the setup plant root decomposes a pathway is created for other plant root to reach water and minerals deeper in the soil. This is building resilience, nutrient holding capacity, activity of life and water holding capacity.

If we have been providing our plants soluble nutrition artificially then our plants become lazy and do not work with or feed the bacteria/ fungi and a result nematodes and protozoa do not have a food source and subsequently worms do not have a food source so we have no worms and no resilience. We have no life cycling nutrients designed by nature.

Below you can see how the cover crops vetch, black oats, rye(rye corn/ cereal rye) & tillage radish have roots that go a lot deeper into the soil profile each rendering different forms of carbon to the soil microbiology.

A setup mix is a diverse mixture of annual cover crops that are tailored to meet a soil resource limitations. This is a mix that allows the soil environment to change in the shortest amount of time.

A setup mix with perennial is exactly that:- diverse set mix plants at lower rates and diverse perennial grasses, clovers, herbs etc.