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West Texas | Shoot, I'm late to the discussion. :-(
But FWIW, there's a guy I know of who plows as deep as possible, up to 36", in each of his fields, at least once, using a plow with a converted grader blade as a plow share. I'm sure many of us have seen how well crops grow over filled-in trenches; this guy did too, and decided to experiment on an entire field. He liked the results so much that he did the same deep plowing to each of his fields. His reasoning was that such deep plowing not only distributes organic matter more evenly through the root zone, it brings up minerals and nutrients into reach of the plant that would otherwise be blocked off by compaction layers, etc.
My own speculation indicates that such deep plowing would only be needed every 8 to 10 years, before the crop response is reduced to levels achieved by shallower plow depths of 8 to 12".
I'd be interested in how it would work on my own fields, except I'd probably hang up on a caliche pan underlying the subsoil in some fields. That strikes me as being more lime than I really need. :-) | |
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A little more about moldboard plowing---------
