Stones and sub soiling

[cowboysupper]

All our grassland for silage is on flat, medium to heavy soil. We are on a four cut silage system and the swards are renewed every 4 years. Last year we introduced a subsoiler to help alleviate compaction, with the plan being to sub soil each silage field once in between reseeds.

A quarter of the silage area was subsoiled in the autumn and we thought we had most of the stones collected at the time. A short while later the field was combed twice again for stones. We tried to be as particular as possible.

The field has recovered nicely. We did not roll in the spring because we thought it would be counterproductive. However we recently took in first cut and the contractor picked up a few more stones than he would like in that specific field. This knocked our confidence a bit in subsoiling as the last thing we want to see is a badly damaged harvester, despite our efforts to be as particular as possible.

For those with more experience of sub soiling how do you mitigate against the risk of stones getting missed and posing a risk to silage equipment?

 

[Lazy Eric]

We subsoiled with a sumo grassland subsoiler last autumn... this is what I think is stone free ground as we’ve ploughed several times with very little stone coming up. As you know the machine goes a few inches lower than the plough pan... my god it was like the bloody Somme when he finished. A day pulling rock from 18 acres and 2 days trying to fill the holes with soil... never again...

 

[Granite Farmer]

Does stony ground need to be sub soiled? I would not dare pull one through our ground.

 

[Matt]

I am probably going to buy one of them areworx roller / slitter. Had a demo the other day on some 3rd year let which was hard hard grassland. Did produce a shatter below the roots without bringing soil up.

 

[cowboysupper]

I am probably going to buy one of them areworx roller / slitter. Had a demo the other day on some 3rd year let which was hard hard grassland. Did produce a shatter below the roots without bringing soil up.

We have a sumo and it leaves a very clean job. Actually used it as well on a wholecrop stubble field last autumn and left it over winter. The spring crop sowed after is looking very healthy, with very little sign of stress from compaction.

Our grass area is not stoney ground but we do seem to pull up the odd flat stone and they are where the risk lies if we miss the odd one.

 

[Derrick Hughes]

You need to address the cause of the problem if you can . Not easy but how many harvest grass when fields a soaking wet .