How Deep Ripping Can Make A Compaction Problem Worse

[Music] Aaron day soil physicist with North Dakota State University joins us here on real agriculture and Aaron this year it seems there's more interest in deep ripping and subsoil ik to deal with some of the compaction issues that we've seen as a result of the past growing season and if we make that decision to take the d prep route there is actually potential that we cause more damage more compaction damage if if we're not doing it precisely what do we need to do to make sure we're actually addressing fixing our problem yes it's you know it needs to be a very calculated decision on whether the deep rip or not any kind of tillage particularly a deep Ripper you have the potential of breaking up so aggregation that you may have you know built and and trying to maintain with all your other soil management practices so there's always that risk to in there but if you do decide to go out and deep rip knowing what depth to rip at is probably the most important question and there's a lot of individuals that you know for good reason you know they go out and they don't know where that tillage or that compaction layer is at and so you set the the shanks to whatever depth you feel is right and you pass it through and you hope that it's done some benefit but the downside is is if you should aim too shallow when that shank and that Ripper goes through it's moving soil in all directions around it right up above away from the bars and down below so if you go too shallow and it's moving soil you can actually compact soil on top of your compaction layer and make it thicker same way on the other side if you aim below it where you end up ripping below it you're lifting soil up into it and that compaction layer is strong and if you don't bust through it you've just made the compaction layer thicker on the bottom side the best placement is right along the bottom edge of where the actual compaction is that way the lift that you get is actually breaking the compaction layer but that only way to know where that's at is actually go out and and try to take a measure of your sole compaction very common device that many soil consultants have is a penetrator it's just a rod with a cone on the bottom and a little pressure gauge on top and you just push it down into the ground and you will see the pressure change as you go deeper the higher the pressure the more compacted that soil is and so if you can go out and just take a few measurements and find out is there a layer of compaction that you want to alleviate then you know how deep the set your shanks on and get the most out of it and actually not make potentially make the compaction even worse all right Thank You Aaron thank you [Music]

Channel: RealAgriculture

Views: 25,808

Rating: 4.6296296 out of 5

Keywords: realagriculture, agriculture, farming, tillage, soil, deep ripping, aaron daigh, NDSU, compaction, soil management, prairie grains conference 2016, north dakota

Id: FKm-T8tiCEE

Length: 3min 13sec (193 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2017