It’s widely known that little soil movement means low crop short term, while heavy soil movement can create disturbance and cause desertification in the worst scenarios. Various establishment systems give you different methods of soil cultivation, from direct drilling to min-till, deep cultivations and complete inversion which can be done through ploughing.
No matter which way you decide to cultivate your land, every approach has advantages and disadvantages and there isn’t one approach that will suit all environments. The hard part is sometimes assessing which system will suit your farm and soil system the best.
There are many factors that need to be considered when thinking about cultivation choice, including the soil type, rainfall, weed pressure and drainage.
In this blog, we will discuss varying cultivation methods which will help you to identify the appropriate practice for you.
If you’re looking for soil cultivation equipment, head over to Claydon Drills today.
Ploughing
Ploughing includes the deep inversion and burial of surface residues, working into the soil cultivation depths of 20-40 cm. Ploughing is known to reduce compaction, capping and slumping risks on sandy and silty soil.
Although in the short term, ploughing produces good soil conditions, using it over a longer period of time can dry out the soil. To plough the right way, you need to make sure that the plough conditions, setting and timing are appropriate.
The following methods are advised when ploughing:
- Controlling the speed of the plough
- Choosing plough depth wisely to suit the soil type
- Make sure that the share width is less than the furrow width
- Setting skimmers
- Subsoiling and whether to subsoil before or after plough
Deep non-inversion
Deep non-inversion in simple terms, is a lower-cost substitute for ploughing, working the soil at a depth of 20-35cm. Crop residues are mixed into the top soil and subsurface compaction is restructured. Farmers don’t tend to use this method anymore, but it’s still worth discussing.
Strip tillage
As opposed to cultivating the whole field, this method cultivates just the strip in which the crops grow, working to a depth of 5-10cm. This method is a form of direct drilling.
Some of the pros to this method include:
- Combines the soil-drying and warming
- Reduces overall soil movement
- Retains undisturbed soil columns
- Option to place fertiliser in drilling zone can save costs
Some of the cons to this method include:
- Different surface conditions/residue levels can increase slugs and carry-over of certain diseases
- Care is required to avoid throwing disturbed soil on uncultivated strips
- Often reliant on rotations and/or chemicals for weed control
You can find various tillage machinery at Claydon Drills.
Direct Drilling
Direct drilling involves a one-pass establishment system without any cultivation pass beforehand. Two types of different drills can be used, one of which includes a cultivator type, the other a tine based drill, which can involve some soil movement and no-till disc, which minimises soil movement.
Another technique involves using the “no-till” or “zero-till” which involves no soil movement. This is considered a more environmentally friendly method. You can find our “zero-till” methods, by heading over to Claydon Drills.
Thank you for reading our blog on ‘how to cultivate soil for farmers’. If you are looking for soil cultivation methods which involve keeping good soil health and larger crop yield, get in touch with Claydon Drills today.
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