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Thumb of Michigan | "Here" my observations I think mirror the OP's. In fact, I've said more than once that I've never encountered soil to heavy to no-till, but I've ran into some too light a few times.
My first sand story is on the back end of my home farm. Tappan Londo clay loam, OM not very high. At one time, less than 1%. Think its closing in on 3% now. Very heavy soil (by our standards), tough to work, has some "blue" clay at about 10 or 12", doesn't respond well to tillage, and its wet. And if you screw it up it crusts. Anyway, sometime in the 40's, my Grandad tiled it every 8 rods. Fixed the drainage. We thought. In the late 60's, my we cleared 20 acres of woods on the back side of the farm. Tiled it every 4 rods, and also went in between the older 8 rod tile at the same time. That was getting to be a wet farm again. Fixed the drainage. We thought. The 90's come along, its my turn to throw some tile at it. Split them all, so now we're at 2 rod. BUT- we also decide to do some digging and try to figure out whats going on. At 18-20" deep, there's a relatively thin layer of sand. 2 or 3 " thick if I remember right. Couldn't get a pocket knife through it. Took a lot of effort to drive a screwdriver into it. Figured out that the wheel or tile plow was breaking that layer, water getting to tile, tile worked until the sand reformed the same player it was before. WE were ripping to about 16" at one time. Wasn't going to work any deeper here, the tile was an inch or 2 below the sand layer. What we did was go to the lowest spots in the problem field, dug down to the tile, making sure we got the sand off the tile trench. Backfilled it with pea stone up to 8 " or so from the top. So far, that and running a land leveler has worked.
Second story was on a rented farm. Lower ground was a really nice loam. Good OM% High end of field was a gravel/sand mix. Low OM. Crop would take off great over the entire field. After a month, no matter what rainfall we'd gotten, the crop on the gravel sand starting wilting. Came close to just dying every year. Dug around and found that the roots were burned off at 8" or so. There were a couple factors that could have caused it. First was that municipal sludge had been applied a few years before, they loaded on this spot. A lot. We also used this area to load trucks. Couldn't find a nutrient problem, pH was fine, no test that Michigan State could perform turned up anything. What we ended up doing was planting it to small grains. Rented an inline ripper and ran it 2 was on the gravel/sand. First time across the rows and the second time with the rows. Then we planted oil seed radish. That seems to be the cure. This si the only time we've ever plugged tile with radish, however. Not on the gravel/sand, down in the loamy soil. It was either because of the soil type of the shallow depth of the tile there, but it was a problem. There was also some other sands on this farm. Ripping it once and the radish I feel worked pretty well there.
I don't think having a plan to rip regularly is the answer. I do think planting covers regularly and working at improving the soil structure, as well as trying to increase some soil biology, is the long term fix. | |
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Improving a hard pan in sand
