You are right,ploughing here over the last 40 years with ploughs on 14"(have to go 8" deep to a tidy job) has mixed topsoil with subsoil on our shallow soils.
Conventional ploughs
- Thread starter Kevtherev
- Start date
blackbob
Member
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
Yes but what hope has a 30-foot combine got, if the field's not flat?
Why does your crop grow best at the bottom of a hill, or in a valley? Because the soil there is deeper, and the roots can go deeper
blackbob
Member
- Location
- Aberdeenshire
Is that such a bad thing? Have your yields not improved in 40 years?
Going back to your original photo @Kevtherev , there are many steep fields in upper Deeside and Donside which in the past have been ploughed downhill-only, in the days of Fergies and Majors without diff-locks or 4wd, and there is little if any topsoil at the top of the field or down one side, and a big bank at the bottom and down the right-hand-side looking downhill. Nowadays if it can be combined it can be ploughed uphill, but in my lime-spreading days I did see one chap carting soil with a trailer to the top of a field from the bottom, and he was so determined to try to plough the field 'properly' he took a body off one side and ploughed 4 furrows downhill and 3 furrows uphill
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- Location
- Hertfordshire
this is a thread about ploughs
not another DD advertisment
Fail to see why people on here are so fanatical about it? Is there something in the water what converts a previously conventional minded farmer into a head banging puritanical DD'er????
Blimey John, you're paranoid. I didn't mention direct drilling. I correctly thought this was a thread about ploughing and so discussed some of the effects of ploughing. Isn't that what a forum is for?
John 1594
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- Location
- Cambridgeshire
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
It's not that far off flat, will take pictures tomorrow. We've no problems here with organic matter, spend all spring hauling slurry and dung
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
How would direct drilling work, when spreading 15 ton dung and 6000 or more gallons slurry to acre?
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Our low lying ground has to be ploughed at least every 5 years or it seals up, floods and becomes unproductive. It has been done with today's machinery, ford 4000's Massey 35x, tvo, horse and spade as well.
Fox Red
Member
And when you grow Sugar beet and Potatoes?
multi power
Member
- Location
- pembrokeshire
trouble with a conventional plough its not so heavy as to need a ton of front weights, so you wont get compaction, you wont need a huge subsoiler, how can that 120k 300hp fent be justified ? the neighbours will never take your crops seriously, even though they do an extra half a ton per acre from half the fuel n half the spray
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
I usually am told that I look at things in totally the wrong way, but the way I see this one is that, my five furrow and 6 furrow plough are worth in the region of 2500 for both, so they are only costing the wearing parts to run. If I sold both to buy a reversible, I'd still have wearing parts to buy, would have to buy a bigger tractor to lift it, and I'd only be ploughing with, at best five furrows instead of 12. So, as my two tractors are almost paid for, and the ploughs are long paid for, il just continue as normal.
ste stuart
Member
- Location
- bolton
Out of interest ridger, what size of tractors do you pull your ploughs with?
Ste
Ste
You go out and plough it in the dark,when no ones looking.
wanton dwarf
Member
Ploughing up and down the hill..... Hope there's not a heavy rainstorm or all the best top soil will end the day lower down the hill than when it started. Keep repeating this over the years and what happens?
Bring some of last year's weed seeds up to the surface too, is always a good plan, especially of you can then mix them into the top few inches so that they germinate at different times. Makes controlling them that much more interesting.
Also let lots of air into the soil so that the soil bacteria can respire using the organic matter as a food source. Repeat this every year and watch the soil OM levels fall. Organic matter is the glue that provides structure to our soils. Take this away and we have to keep ploughing and aerating to prevent the soil slumping.
Ripping through the mycorhyzzal fungi is also a great strategy if you want to limit the nutrients your crop scavenges, as is destroying the earthworm's habitat.
Soil science is fiendishly complicated but there are some basic things we could all do to improve our land. I would say preservation of top soil and increasing the soil organic matter content are the two most important things to focus on if we want to hand our land on to the next generation in better condition than when we inherited it.
It is interesting to read some of this stuff but you're pointing out the negative points while at the same time attempting to state yearly usage of the plough as if this is some kind of norm.
All crop remains will carry over diseases from previous years, this leads to immediate infection of the next crop leading to higher reliance on sprays and higher likelihood of developing resistance by providing a continuous repository of disease and incubation.
Residues left on the surface will naturally emit any nitrogen directly back into the atmosphere and lockup phosphates and other minerals at the surface - waiting for soil flora and fauna to be bothered with breaking the residue down.
Don't forget that the plough will improve drainage - rather than "destroy" the earth worms habitat the plough can therefore improve the habitat in some of the most challenging conditions.
I don't agree with increasing the soil organic matter regardless as a solution to anything - swamps and bogs have lots of organic matter but are water logged and dead environments.
Plants don't need soil at all as can be seen by hydroponics.
I think you are straying into the realms of religion and blind conservation.
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Pull the 5 furrow with a same 95 and the 6 furrow with tm 140 this year, used to pull 5 furrow with same 90 and 6 furrow with 100.6. Why?
ste stuart
Member
- Location
- bolton
Just wondering how much smaller a tractor could be used really. The only time I've seen a conventional plough used is at vintage do's. Nobody seems to be able to pull 5 furrows with under 200hp round us any more. When it's not that long ago the same ploughs were on 120hp tractors. I often wonder weather or not it is actually progress. And by the sounds of things your covering ground quickly with your ploughs. Did conventional ploughs go out of fashion because of operator ability? Or are reversibles so much faster?
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
I don't really understand the big tractors. That same 90 I had has done more work than you could ever believe possible, I see people running 4 furrow reversible a on tm 190's round here, I think a lot of it is for show. My uncle used to plough 250 acres per year with a four furrow conventional fiskars plough on a mf 590 two wheel drive, and got it all done.
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Another thing I see is massive tractors sowing with a three meter power harrow and drill, and complaining about not enough power on the hills, iv never had any issues, I can put tractor down a gear to go up the hill
Could it possibly be that the 200hp tractors have other jobs to do and not just ploughing?
ridger
Member
- Location
- Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Another thing, if the plough is right set, a smaller tractor will pull it. We've ploughed 195 acres this year, some of it very steep, some very hard, average fuel use 6 litre per acre