Ok, technically my field season started as soon as my cover crops were planted in September, but until this week I was only collecting a small amount of manageable (but still important) data like NDVI readings and soil samples. But on Monday things ramped up as I collected my first (of five) biomass samples!
Sampling went surprisingly well; I had all of my collection bags labeled the day before and remembered all of the necessary sampling tools. Also, the only other time I have harvested living biomass was back in 2011 (or 2010?) with my friend Kevyn, so I was afraid things would go slowly. My awesome friend and lab mate, Bri, helped me harvest 90% of the plots and accounting for maybe 30 minutes of goofing off (eating cupcakes, checking out other study plots, chatting instead of clipping) it only took us 4 hours.
We are going to start processing samples next week and will hopefully have some cool data in a few months, but for now I wanted to share a few of my thoughts from this field excursion with you:
Sampling went surprisingly well; I had all of my collection bags labeled the day before and remembered all of the necessary sampling tools. Also, the only other time I have harvested living biomass was back in 2011 (or 2010?) with my friend Kevyn, so I was afraid things would go slowly. My awesome friend and lab mate, Bri, helped me harvest 90% of the plots and accounting for maybe 30 minutes of goofing off (eating cupcakes, checking out other study plots, chatting instead of clipping) it only took us 4 hours.
We are going to start processing samples next week and will hopefully have some cool data in a few months, but for now I wanted to share a few of my thoughts from this field excursion with you:
- Field work planning- Be prepared, nothing sucks more than “oh, man, I forgot (insert item here)” or realizing 24 hours before field work that you need to order something and it won’t arrive in time. Being prepared also applies to electronics, charge batteries and have extra. In fact, bring as much extra of every item you need as possible. We only needed two scissors, but I had four, which was great because one pair broke. Yeah, we seriously used household scissors for this, see picture above.
- Adaptability- Have a set plan, but mentally prepare yourself for any step to fail along the way. For example, I had to redo my random sampling locations because I somehow miscalculated the total number of rows per plot. This was a mild problem, but sometimes problems can get tricky and you have to be creative, like when an IRGA stops working and you don’t have cell service to call a technician.
- “Naked soil”- Many people still have hesitations and negative feelings towards cover crops for one reason or another. I wanted to share the two pictures below to get at one huge importance of cover crops we don’t always talk about. “Naked soil” is a bad thing. It washes away, blows away, crusts, etc. If you look at the before and after picture you can see how cover crops might prevent these bad things. Imagine what might happen to the soil the radishes have been removed from. This would be even more drastic in a conventionally tilled field, whereas my study site is a no-till field, hence the corn residue in the picture.