clay problems

[rambler]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( I have actually seen places where there is loam on top, and clay below, where top watering has 'floated' sideways and comes out somewhere far from where the water was introduced. )</font>

My entire farm is 120 feet of yellow clay scraped off of Canada & depositied here in Minnesota. Then as the glaciers melted, it created rolling hills.

So I am _very_ familiar with the condition you mention above. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif I have several sinkholes in my fields on the sides of hills. The bottoms & valleys are well tiled, but now in heavy rains, these sidehill springs are a real problem.

As well trying to plow or work this ground takes at least one size bigger tractor, or one size less implement than recomended. For exanple, a lot of folks say you can pull a 5-16 plow with an 80-90 hp tractor. Not in my wildest dreams could I do that! Worked a 86 hp tractor _very_ hard pulling a 4-16 plow.

As to building roads on it, as someone said, take the organic matter off the top, 8 inches or so typically, fill in with clay again, then do your rock & gravel to build above the clay, so in effect you are floating your well-drained road bed on top of the clay. Placing rock or gravel down below the surface will not help drain your road, as the clay will hold it full of water. No good. Need the drainage materials to be above the surface, so water drains off your road & out the sides. Any road at all on clay needs to be raised up off the surface level.

--->Paul

 

[SLOBuds]

What are you growing in that plowed clay? Or are you just trying to prep the area, or such?

When I plant trees in clay, I take a couple of approaches. I either dig a huge hole, throw a bunch of gypsite in the bottom, create a loam-type soil from the removed clay mixed with organic and other materials, then plant the tree. Or I just plant a tree that is advertised as potentially growing in clay. These are plants listed as growing in 'poor drainage'.

Clay soil is usually listed as having good nutriants. I believe this is because the nutriants get trapped with the small particle size, plus the fact that water is unable to leach the nutriants out. Conversely, it is easy to incorrectly fertilize loam soil if too much water is applied thereby leaching nutrients out.

An interesting topic about something that has been my nemesis for years!

 

[rambler]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( What are you growing in that plowed clay? Or are you just trying to prep the area, or such?

)</font>

A few 100 acres of corn, soybeans, oats, & alfalfa. Got 183 bu of corn per acre which ain't bad, and I _love_ a drought, as the soil holds it's moisutre well - prices go up, my yields hold pretty well, and it is so much easier to operate on dry ground!

It's not so good for beans or alfalfa, the legumes do not like it. I am in a limestone area, so don't need to worry about ph much - well some peat ground is too high, but little you can do to correct that.

It is a challenge tho, as the 'reccommended practices' from people sitting behind a desk that want to tell you how to farm have never actually worked in such stuff, and have no clue how different it is, or how differently one must work with it. Tillage, fertilizer, weed control, erosion control - all a little different.

We have had 3-4 years of basically dry weather. I still had a few acres flood out 2 of those years, but sure has been nice to be mostly dry.

--->Paul

 

[KentT]

Paul,

183 bu/acre is quite good! What part of Minnesota? Many places in Southern Minnesota have "drain tiles' or "French drains" put into the fields to help keep some of the moisture out to the clay... Does your farm?

This brings up another point that we used successfully on the farm (in addition to drain tiles) -- that is the value of ditches, and how well they work. If you dig a deep ditch on each side of a clay-based roadway, the water will seep out of the clay base underneath the road (firming up the base) and then evaporate from the ditch... You can also lower the water level this way underneath fields, just by digging ditches across them at regular intervals.

 

[rambler]

There is a small - looking ditch running through my farm. I'm 2nd to last farm where it is a 'ditch', after that it becomes natural creek. There are 10,000 plus acres upstream that all flows through my farm. I can be dry here, if they get 2.5 inch rainfall or more north of me, I will have 5-9 acres drown out - the tile runs the wrong direction if the ditch gets high, & fills in a low spot, drowning it out.

Got, hummmm, several miles of tile under this little 200 acre farm. All the low spots. Now I need to add branches, up into the hills to drain those clay weep spots. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif The danger is, with a few gravel/sand/shale layers, I could dry some spots out too much, & in dry years those will show up as burn-outs.

Back in the 50s dad had a survey machine, he staked out & figured all the tile lines for many many neighbors over the years. They started digging by hand, then a fellew got a wheel machine. Now of course several farmers own their own chain trencher or a tile plow. I just got in on the tail end of holding the target stick for him a few times before he quit with that job.

--->Paul