What is subsoiling and why do we do it?

This week Harrison talks about sub-soiling and why it benefits the farm and the environment!
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Harrison Bardwell
Bardwell Farm
49 Main Street
Hatfield, MA 01038
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Music
Declan - Think
Audio Library ► • Think - Declan DP | Fr...
Thanks so much for watching!

[@MoHntr]

Great explanation. I grew up on a farm and we never did this, but I can see where it would have been beneficial. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Good day.

[@bardwellfarm1685]

Thank you and welcome to our channel!

[@sushantikasarkar1915]

Thank you very much. Your explanations help me a lot😊

[@mameboucarfaye]

Thank you. very instructive

[@bardwellfarm1685]

Glad you liked it!

[@cgjoe64]

Can you go into more detail on what appears to be a home made mole plough attached to your sub soiler

[@bardwellfarm1685]

Hi and welcome to our channel! Thank you for your interest :) A metal wedge sits on a chain at the bottom of the subsoiler shank creating a 3" to 4" channel allowing better drainage into the soil. Another video explaining this in more detail will be coming soon!

[@cgjoe64]

@@bardwellfarm1685 Thanks for the reply I’m originally from the UK and mole ploughs are reasonably common, actually used in some form for hundreds of years. Early steam tractors were actually used for mole plough drainage. I recently got back into farming and want to use a mole plough on the pastures , but I can’t seem to find one in Canada. I was actually researching designs to build one when I came across your Chanel Great video. Looking forward to your update Thanks

[@bardwellfarm1685]

Hi@@cgjoe64, video dropping this afternoon on the mole plow, thank you so much for your input!

[@larryhasard3989]

How rocky is your soil? I was trying to improve soil drainage, to reduce the number and size of wet areas, that drain/infiltrate water poorly, by subsoiling. When I hit baseball size and larger rock chunks, of which there are many, they hang up on the beam, and tear huge furrows in the pasture grass, leaving 8 inch high mounds, on both sides of ankle turning, deep and wide slots. I have been running 18 to 20 inches deep. A neighbor suggested running the subsoiler at 10 inches deep to avoid some of the rocks, but that seems less productive, maybe to the point of not being worth the effort/time/fuel. Any opinions? These areas were never routinely plowed or planted, but were trod on by stock and horses, before there were tractors, and used for grazing dairy cattle and pigs, or parking equipment. afterwards. In the last 20 years, they are just mowed. The wetter areas take several days to dry enough to not rut, when driven on by my 45 hp tractor. All the mega dairy farms are or have all been tiled. Every year they add thousands of feet of tile, and have become low or no till operations, using herbicides to kill off covercrops, before doing light cultivation when injecting liquid manure, waiting a week, or so, then light cultivation, spraying of preemergent herbicide and planting corn, grain or soybeans in a single 40 ft wide pass. They run rock pickers every 2 or three years, to collect what the frost pushes up. They also have huge lakes that form in the lowspots, following spring rains, that will drown the seed. The following late winter they have the trackhoe out there installing more tile, and load out tons of excavated rock chunks. Perhaps glacial till is not a good candidate for subsoiling.

[@bardwellfarm1685]

This is great feedback! I come from soils where there are no rock at all, I am blessed to say the least. So I can’t speak to this very well. But you want to be subsoiling down past your plow pan/compaction layer. This can very from field to field, but a rule of thumb is deeper than 12” at bare minimum. It will take multiple passes in the same furrow to penetrate hard pan on really compacted soil. You may want to try ripping more than once. Maybe try angling your subsoiler differently to not catch rocks as easy, just a thought. Again, every soil type is different. Even in no-till systems compaction can form and it is important to break that up at least every few years. You could try chisel plowing to mix up the top soil area and break up those rock clods a bit. Thanks for watching!

[@barney1941]

what brand is your subsoiler. i like the clevis better than pin

[@aligjani6046]

You FB name please.

[@bardwellfarm1685]

Welcome to our channel! Our Facebook name is @bardwellfarm