Cultivator / plough pan

Manny

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
In the middle.
Paraplow. The thinking mans subsoiler. Quick blast with ph to knock the tops off and straight in with unidrill.
I sore this rare paraplow in a dealers yard not long ago
IMG_20201109_124426_680.jpg

I'd never seen a five leg one before.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Educate me please, what’s so special about the Paraplough?

Why that over the standard Subsoiler?
@Selectamatic , the paraplow leaves a more level surface and creates more micro cracking at the surface. You can adjust the lift and shatter as well. Best spring barley we ever had was on land paraplowed after beet and sheep grazing the tops. then Blast over with PH to level then straight in with unidrill. Massive crop. The problem with a lot of “min till” stuff is you can create a 4” layer of sludge on top of concrete. The paraplow leaves a considerable amount of natural structure intact and doesn’t pulverise the surface. It’s a hell of lot better than a Ransomes 2 leg and having to split your wheelings leaving big peaks and troughs. Best used in the autumn when it’s softening on top and dry underneath, though I have used it in the spring with some success. No good when it’s like concrete though. Will pull the lugs off the tyres and kill a grass ley due to root pruning.
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Ah, the treadmill. Subsoil the pan caused by cultivation, drive over the recently subsoiled field in a wet autumn, jam it down, plough to remove compaction but it’s wet again, plough pan is now the issue.
 

rob h

Member
Location
east yorkshire
We have nothing drilled on our. Heavy clay farm.some fields were given a pass over with a st. Xpress.and they are a lot dryer than the un cultivated fields. We rarely use a subsoiler as our land cracks deep down in summer.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Ah, the treadmill. Subsoil the pan caused by cultivation, drive over the recently subsoiled field in a wet autumn, jam it down, plough to remove compaction but it’s wet again, plough pan is now the issue.
Without a doubt we would end up with some impermeable clay basins and ponds without occasional subsoiling to reopen the porous fill over the drains. Those areas were ponds before the land was farmed. Solid blue clay.
The Para Plow can work at anything from about 8 to 22” depending on what’s required.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I've never had land dry enough to put anything that deep in spring.
Spring subsoiling not really advisable except sometimes on our beet land we subsoil trafficked hard sand to stop the water running towards wet clay ponded areas. I don’t think the sand ever really smears but can get packed hard on top with trailers etc.
Patience is worth more than anything.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I dunno about smearing. Sometimes its maybe just best to get it ploughed to let it dry. Even when it’s fairly wet the point maybe smear a narrow part of the furrow bottom but the wing generally pulls the soil apart leaving a largely non smeared furrow bottom though the turned furrow may well smear as it runs over the top side of wing. But this is exposed to weathering so isn’t a problem. And I think this highlights why the plough came about. It speeded up the warming and drying process and greatly extended the sowing window as well as burying a lot of disease ridden trash. Without it you’d wait forever to drill here then it goes from lard to concrete literally in 24 hours.
If I was on free draining chalky loam only growing combinables I might be selling the plough but not here. Sadly “messy” crops are the ones that pay the bills. We keep trying though, we really do. Every year I try to reduce cultivation but then it seems to entail big doses of round up or other chemicals. So it ends up “just plough it and let’s be done with it.”
 

ajd132

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Suffolk
Without a doubt we would end up with some impermeable clay basins and ponds without occasional subsoiling to reopen the porous fill over the drains. Those areas were ponds before the land was farmed. Solid blue clay.
The Para Plow can work at anything from about 8 to 22” depending on what’s required.
I was being cheeky. But I have experienced the treadmill effect that can be created by working soil
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
we had archaeologists here, for months, digging their 'pits', they could show you plough pans from iron age to present, so panning is not a new thing. The other suprise, was how the soil had moved over the centuries, the earliest pans were 5/6 feet down, and we were a grass farm, others had been 15/20 ft down ! Our neighbour takes great pride in ploughing to exactly the same depth, and way, every year, and wonders why water hangs around, on very free draining ground, and refuses to dig a hole, because their is no pan. Over the hedge, we know the same soil pans, and at varying depths, surface pan, is the worst. Wherever we can, we do not plough, we tine, at variable depths, depending on the field. Having stopped ploughing as a norm, we have seen a massive improvement in soil structure, and topsoil. But d/d is not great here, tine, p/h drill is great.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
we have been doing a bit of drainage, and water pipe burying, it is amazing what you can learn from a trench, we have a good 8/10 inches of nice dark brown soil, and good downward 'cracks' below that, but the 'old' drains, were horseshoe, on a clay slate, 5 foot down, right at where the soil changed to clay, and as up on the top, little soil movement, those drains would have been early 1800's. glad it wasn't me that had to put them in, by hand.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
we have been doing a bit of drainage, and water pipe burying, it is amazing what you can learn from a trench, we have a good 8/10 inches of nice dark brown soil, and good downward 'cracks' below that, but the 'old' drains, were horseshoe, on a clay slate, 5 foot down, right at where the soil changed to clay, and as up on the top, little soil movement, those drains would have been early 1800's. glad it wasn't me that had to put them in, by hand.
Too right. They are quite a depth here. I also think of the work it must have been to get the ditches dug out deep enough for the outfalls with little mechanisation. We are sometimes criticised for cleaning out ditches too deep but it’s no deeper than they were originally dug out 300 years ago. This is why I can’t understand the reluctance for cleaning out watercourses. It’s just normal maintenance work to get the silt just below the outfalls. Let it bung the outfalls and you will have major problems.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
deepest one we found was 7/8 ft deep, at it's outlet, we were trying to sort a big puddle out, digger driver said he would have a poke by the stream, saw some water seeping out, and cleared down to the outlet, the big puddle disappeared as we watched, that was a horseshoe drain, so 200 yrs old ? Few years back hit another horseshoe drain, same field, not so deep, just like a fountain, 2/3 ft in the air ! But how much maintenance has been done on drainage systems, in recent years, other than emergency work, nowhere near enough. Virtually any digger work, you find old drains, the archaeologists showed us all the ditches, which surrounded the huts/fields etc, right back to iron age. Most of us haven't got a clue, about what is hidden beneath our feet, we were incredibly lucky to see a lot, of what is there.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
the cheapest cultivation you can do, dig a few holes with a spade, when you actually know, you can adjust to that.
Good soil structure is the cheapest fertilizer you can have, not looking after it, is the dearest.
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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