dug
Member
- Location
- North Island, New Zealand
On most of our land, if it is wet, and you leave an open slot, and it rains, you are fine. If it stays dry for a week with some sun, imagine a disc cutter making expansion gaps in concrete and then dropping a seed in and expecting it to grow. On some of the better land, when it dries, it will mellow and some soil will probably cover the seed, or at least the rolls will. My hopes were that by gradually moving from inversion, to deep non inversion, to min till, and then dd and eventually zero till, the condition of the land will improve to aid some of these issue. There are lots of drills out there, just need to try a few and see if disc, or tine is the better option for my land. Trouble is, like everywhere, as we have expanded, our range of soil types is increasing. There is not a silver bullet, but there may be a nice compromise bit of kit out there. My guess is zero till may be a step too far, but we'll see
In a discussion regarding 'soil types' and what you can get away with when drilling damp ground (in terms of slot closure), I think the key ( in my experience) is how fine textured the soil is classed...... heavy = fine textured = less forgiving.
I think you are right to be wary of no tilth and dodgy slot closure if you are on fine textured soil. Assuming you are on genuine heavy soil the best and most reliable consistent results will come from creating conditions in the seed zone that are friable and closed up.
It may be that you can tweak your rotation to make it easier and more likely to get those conditions. To some extent drill choice helps but I agree that there is no machine that will be fool proof in the absence of other efforts/ strategies to create good drilling conditions.