Weather on the farm always seems to have yin and yang, a good and a bad. I like to focus on the good. The late winter and spring snow is keeping us from getting into the fields to plow, pick up rocks and plant the first crops. But, there is an old adage that says "snow is a poor man's fertilizer". What was that? We like the fact that snow insulated the ground and perennial crops from wide temperature fluctuations in the winter. But how is it fertilizer?
Nitrogen is one of the main nutrients needed by all plants to grow. Typically there is little available nitrogen in the soil naturally as competing plants have used most of it up. Nitrogen is just too valuable for them not to take it when it becomes available. As a farmer I am constantly trying to provide adequate nitrogen to the crops. As plants decay in the soil or in a compost pile, they provide nitrogen. We grow "green manures" so that those plants can be plowed into the soil and provide nitrogen/ "manure" for the next crop, the crop that we plan on harvesting for us. We bring wood chips and leaf collections to the farm to provide future nitrogen. We plant nitrogen fixing crops, legumes, which have a symbiotic relationship with a bacteria that can "fix" nitrogen from the air and make that nitrogen available to the plants. Our atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, but in the atmosphere it is not available to the plants roots. The challenge is to get that nitrogen from the air into the soil.
Enter- snow. As snow particles fall through the air they naturally pick up some nitrogen molecules. Rain will do the same, but snow has a larger surface area to catch nitrogen. The snow will bring a small amount of nitrogen from the atmosphere to the soil. When the snow melts the water will bring the nitrogen to the soil. If the soil is frozen, the nitrogen enriched water might runoff the soil instead of moving through the soil. For this reason, late winter and spring snows are the best poor man's fertilizer.
Spring snows bring sweet summer harvests.
Farmer Dave
