5 SOIL FACTS
WHAT’S BEHIND HAZY DAYS AND OTHER SOIL FACTORS.
By Gil Gullickson
2/19/2018
Jethro Tull isn’t just a 1960s and 1970s rock band. An English agriculturalist by the same name lived in the 1600s and 1700s. He loved to till the soil. And till. And till some more.
“He believed the more you tilled, the better the soil,” says Aaron Daigh, a North Dakota State University (NDSU) soil scientist. Tull reasoned that the tiny soil particles caused by tillage pulverizing the soil would be easier for plants to suck up as they grew.
Fortunately, farmers and soil scientists have come a long way since those days in understanding soils. Still, there are some soil facts that often fly under the radar. Here are a few to keep in mind from Daigh and Jodi DeJong-Hughes, University of Minnesota (U of M) Extension crops educator.
1. ROCKY SOILS ARE A PAIN. BUT IT COULD BE WORSE.
Farmers in states like Minnesota and the Dakotas may cuss the rocks that glaciers deposited thousands of years ago. On the plus side, these glaciers also helped create some of the best soils in the world.
“Up here, it is amazing how black and deep the soils are,” Daigh says. He compared that with the bright red soil of western Arkansas (where he grew up) that had just 1 to 2 inches of topsoil.
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