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| The problem I've allways had "here", with directly plowing unworked corn trash/residue is the trash layer between each bottom. The shallower the plow, the more concentrated the trash layer. The more concentrated the trash layer, the greater inconsistancy of water drainage/retention, and various other problems. When planting wheat behind sweet corn, the field would be striped with plow furrow stripes. One day while driving around in circles with a tractor, I noticed the similarity of the plow stripes and the tile line stripes. The tile line stripes would allways be green and growing when everything else is drought dormant. Reason is, the tile was put in with a wheel trencher and the spoils were mixed up when the trench was closed. This put top soil and organic matter into a trench deeper than any top soil or organic matter had ever been. This allowed the roots to follow the nutrients and water much lower into the soil profile than ever before. Once I dug up a tile line and thats exactly what the profile showed was a very deep root structure right down the tile trench.
Eventually I started noticing a lot of thing about the soil when worked wet or very moiste. Most people allready would know this stuff, but I'm quite slow at most things in life. (probably should've rode the shote buzz to skule) I soon quit working the soil when wet. When I conventional till something now, I allways work the soil dry. I will chisel as deep as I can and disk as deep as I can, then roll the field before plowing. This way I can plow deeper and mix the trash/residue in better.
Thats sort of the parameters I use, is the deeper the better, the heavier the trash load. With the similarity to the tile trench, I sort of look at it as putting good soil in, rather than pulling up good soil. I know, thats' short bus talk............. | |
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A little more about moldboard plowing---------
