Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Forage harvest at Duchess Horse Sanctuary

UBET began a field trial last year of biochar at different application rates in 10'x10' plots of pasture at the Duchess Horse Sanctuary near Oakland, Oregon. Thanks again to our late, beloved leader, Jim Long for starting this project back in 2014. We wish Jim could have seen the results from this years growth. We had made another application of biochar in fall of 2015, and the differences were observable this year. Thanks to OSU-ARS researchers Kristin Trippe and Claire Phillips and their students for organizing the harvest and for analyzing the results. We will post their report soon, but here are some pictures from the harvest on June 15. One very noticeable difference: the plots with the most biochar had more fescue and other perennials. The plots with less or no biochar had a lot more weedy stuff.

The plots at Duchess Horse Sanctuary
Mike Burke of UBET and Kristin Trippe of OSU-ARS harvest a square meter from a plot
A group effort to harvest the sample squares
Barbara Long bags the harvest



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