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Grittyville, WA

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=23ifgpl_R4s

Explains issues relevant to corn... seems highly applicable to pumpkins. Says subsoiling should be done when soil is dry.

4/12/2018 5:15:38 AM

Anamosa, IA BPIowegian@aol.com

One thing that helps break up compaction is the winter freeze/thaw cycle. Most farmers I worked with liked to do any terrace construction in the fall, because of all the compaction the equipment does. Most subsoiling, whether straight shank rippers or Paraplows is usually done here in the fall as well.

Too much tillage is hard on your soil structure. I have gone to real limited tillage. I use a fork to turn the soil over and shatter the big clumps. Then I give it a day or so for the worms to go deeper and hit it one pass with my mini tiller. I till up just the area under the hoop house at first, then work out away as the plants grow. Any weeds are treated as green manure. My soil is staying nice and loose, and I am seeing a huge increase in the number of worms. Worms are great for improving soil structure.

One thing discussed is crop residues tying up nitrogen as they breakdown. Some farmers eliminate this by using notill, so the residues are not incorporated in the soil. Most pumpkin growers remove all of the vines to prevent spread of disease. But if you have enough land that you can rotate your planting site every year, you probably could get away with leaving your residues on the ground, tilling them in and giving them a year to break down and disease pathogens time to die. The other thing we do is go add large amounts of composted material that has the organic matter already broken down. That is just not practical for corn farmers.

4/12/2018 8:31:21 AM

Grittyville, WA

I think its an interesting topic... we will see how the Patons do taking their soil texture and depth to an extreme that most of can’t... maybe it will make a difference for them.

4/12/2018 10:10:12 PM