Here's why you should subsoil, meaning "rip" compacted clay ground.

[Dadnatron]

I'm the OP on this and here a couple more pictures of chunks pulled up at 12" to 14". Most of these chunks are 1/4 to 1/2 or a little less than the size of a five gallon bucket. Lets see your sweet corn try to grow through that ground. I still find it hard to believe the compaction that forms in clay ground when I think not much is occurring

Classic example of dense clay subsoiling with parabolic (curved) shank. Dense clay breaking along predetermined paths.

Pages 22-23 fig 15 - in the article.

 

[CalG]

I'ld put my money on the radash.

Way less fuel, and the improvement to the soil will likely persist due to the added organic mass.
No till is the trend, if you can get by with it.

 

[Steave]

Different parts of the country I'm sure call things different. Around here we would call that ripping or chisel plowing. I got this picture from the sleasynet but this is what we would call subsoiling.




Around 20" deep with very little disturbance to the top of the soil hence the term subsoiling. Yes like you said it's usually done when dry and that cracks the ground better underneath. Tillage or no till, whatever anybody uses, is done afterward.

I've never done it but on small gardens and food plots some subsoil before running a rotary tiller and it seems to work good.

Lot of good reading here thanks for starting this thread. We've always had subsoilers but never really practiced the regular use of them until the last couple of years. We used them every few years and for lots of other reasons than just subsoiling.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I use the Hay King brand subsoiler and follow with a disc harrow and then spike tooth, if making a seed bed, subsoiler alone if working an established hay patch.

My soil is Houston Black Clay and my Bermuda hay patch, which sends out runners for a new plant to root, loves the coulters on this machine as you get the subsoiling effect to aerate the soil with minimum surface disturbance and the coulter to cut the runners thus making a new plant or so between each ripper section. I was really surprised as I bought mine a few years ago at the JD dealer and it was only $1500 for a 4 shank, new. Built like a tank. Amazing.

I had a hay king with the collimators followed by scarifiers. The scarifiers pointed pretty much straight down and didn't "pull" soil up. I sold it because I have a bit of flint rock on our land, up to potato size. It would pull those up and I did not like that.

Thanks for the tips y'all! I might have to go get me some of those radish seeds.