- Location
- Lincolnshire
Interesting. Why do you think that?
Ok, bear with me here. In my earlier days of farming, I was terrified of not getting land worked in time to weather for a seedbed. This was the day of the Simba DD packer. So we would chase the combine around slooshing clay into various sized chunks, and "packing" them into fairly loose ridges for the weather to get into, then work in front of the drill.
Two things seemed apparent - that more bf grew in the trough of the pressed ridges, and secondly big rain didn't soak into the soil evenly but ran almost around the clods and settled at the point where cultivated soil met uncultivated. After big rain, if you walked on it the top was drybbut you could hear the slurp of wet underneath. The same went for overwintered ploughing which looked like it was drying on top, but was "chocolate pudding" because all the water was trapped at the point where the soil density changed the greatest. Untouched stubble dries fairly quickly.
Since we often "need" some cultivation for best yield / enough tilth to drill / remove wheelings I now go from stubble to proper seedbed asap. So cultivator and power harrow at the same time, or disc/ press then roll. Overly loose seems to be worse for weed chit, drying, and the drill works better in well consolidated soil.
Not scientific. Just seems to be how it appears.