Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Pasture Terraces?

A lot depends on your annual rainfall. But solid practices of management usually pay off.

Down here we have to add brush control to the equation as well. That's what what I do.

My land used to be terraced, as was all of the neighboring land. Mostly has been disked down and leveled out starting back in the 1970's. My Dad built a lot of terraces for us and our neighbors back when I was very young. I never saw it used or remember it hooked up but the old terracing plow is out back. I did see a picture of one hooked up long ago, and it was hooked up under the tractor, small Ford, with the single rolling plow between the right front wheel and the back wheel. Just a few miles south of me is the beginning of the Grand Prairie, but where I live is a lot of clay and highly erodeable. miles

We soil test for lime, and dry fertilizer.

I work for NRCS and have got to disagree about the no-till planting comment. NT is great for controlling sheet and rill erosion but does nothing for controlling gully erosion. Gully erosion happens in areas of concentrated flow. Depending on crop rotation, soil type, slope and slope length, you may need terraces (or Diversions on steeper ground) and grass waterways or cover crops to control the erosion. I see lots of NT corn and soybean rotations that have problems with erosion. The soybean residue disintegrates and leaves the soil surface bare. Pretty soon, you get little rivulets of water that form into bigger concentrated flow areas and you have an ephemeral gully. Leave it go long enough and you have a serious size gully.

BTW, Terraces are designed to be farmed so are they flatter and broader than Diversions. They worked well but modern wide equipment doesn't fit very well on them anymore. Max field slope for building a terrace is around 6 or 7% if I remember right. Anything over that needs to be a diversion. Terraces can be designed to store water (and let it soak in) or sloped to drain or have a standpipe to drain. Diversions always are sloped to drain and are seeded to a grass mix.

I've been farming contours strips, waterways and diversions since I was a kid in the 70's. Yes, they can be a pain but fixing gullies each spring is a bigger pain. Not to mention losing your topsoil.

Dale

I agree. Around here, terraces have gone the way of the dodo bird. WASCOBs are the more common practices, especially since CRP re-enrolls have gotten harder and/or less rental payments.

When we put in culverts the cattle made paths that wash down the hills.