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Freeburg, IL | John had everyone at the meeting go a dig their own plant (we actually did this at two fields). Everyone held up their plant parallel to the ground and dropped it. He then pointed out where the field cultivator ran and formed a compaction line. This compaction line was where the bulk of the rootmass stopped.
So, if we are going to continue to run the field cultivator we basically have two options:
1. Run the field cultivator a little deeper. Unfortunately this will cost us more fuel and time.
or
2. Lets spend a little time and acetylene. Since most field cultivators have sweeps that completely overlap one another, lets create a bypass zone.
As your sweep moves through the soil, it lifts soil. In order to lift anything you must put force downward. Thus we have a compaction layer where the bottom edge of the sweep carries all the weight from all the ground we are lifting (tilling). With our sweeps generally providing 100% overlap we have a 100% compaction zone.
Here is what John was suggesting. Since most of us are probably not too far off from needing to replace the sweeps on our cultivator, we can try this simple solution and easily fix it if we aren't happy with it.
Take your torch or plasma cutter and cut off a piece of the "wing" of the sweeps. Create a 1-2" gap between sweeps. This will allow many bands of non-compacted areas that will allow for better water infiltration and deeper root growth. This obviously doesn't allow for the entire rootsystem to go deeper, but the plant will have better access to the next one, two or ten inches of nutrients in the soil.
If you don't like the system then you can simply replace your worn sweeps. If you do like the setup, then you can buy smaller sweeps or make a pattern and cut sweeps down on the work bench and then install them when they need to be replaced.
There are lots of questions on different scenarios. If you are going to work down a field of foot tall weeds, you may or may not get adequate weed control. If weeds are starting to emerge, you should have excellent weed control. If you have two cultivators and run 2 trips in the spring, cut down the second pass cultivator. Run the first cultivator slightly shallower and run the modified cultivator slightly deeper.
Again, it is a simple fix if you don't like the system: Replace your modified, but worn sweeps as you would normally do. As I said, you are only out a little time and gas. That is a lot cheaper than nearly every other alternative.
If you are no-tilling, sorry, John didn't get into that. I'm guessing that is going to take a lot more work. | |
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Expanding the root system....(from below)
