| AGB - 12/3/2013 14:56
Plow 4 feet deep?
http://ochistorical.blogspot.com/2012/04/worlds-largest-plow.html
Some people have even gone down to 6' not something you see too much anymore The idea is to take horizontal stratified soils and turn the layers vertical for deep rooted crops. Many places you will have a thin layer of coarse sand followed by a thin layer of clay, followed by a thin layer of Glacial till and maybe a layer of what we call hardpan aka clachie and you won't notice a problem if you were growing pasture and grains but it's a whole different story with trees and vines.
Now instead of deep plowing with a moldboard for permanent crops like Almonds, Walnuts and grapes for raisins or table now many people will mark out the field where each plant will go then dig a pit 8 -10' deep with a hydraulic excavator. Then let the pits sit open a few months during the dry summer in the fall you would fill in the holes and shallow rip the whole field and level it out. Planting would typically be done during the winter. There is a lot of tillage the first year or two then its Roundup down the rows and a mower down the centers to keep the grasses trimmed up.
Some people would wonder why the cost to plow that deep. In side by side comparisons in stratified soils unmodified soil will produce 1000 - 1200 lbs/acre of almonds and the deep plowed field will be in the 4,000-5,000 lbs/acre range. With a price of $3 a lb and 30 years of production there is no problem penciling out that investment.
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Plowing speed
