Missouri river bottom south of Sioux City, IA | Hi Bob
There are different flavors of this “Luton” soil in this Missouri river bottom. In one of my fields you can occasionally find crawdad holes where you can check the water table by dropping a small dirt clod down the hole. It’s wet 8 years out of 10. On the other side I’ve grown 280 bushel corn on other “Luton” soils that have good drainage. The combination of high water tables and poor drainage makes it a real challenge to farm year after year. The key is getting good surface drainage established which is sometimes hard to do. Typically we have about 3 foot of fall in a mile around here. That’s less the ¾ of an inch per 100 feet. Soil compaction is the yield killer on this wet soil. To counteract that and other problems I’ve switched to strip-till and see no reason to quit.
Do a internet search on “Strip-Till Mitigates River Bottom Soils Issues” and you’ll see why I’m pretty content. Oh by the way Tom Oswald and some of his good friends had a big influence on me to switch to strip-till. Thanks Tom!!
Tom N.
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No till troubles in heavy clay (gumbo) Solil Life and others
