Scored a one shank ripper-subsoiler

[sixdogs]

If I don't cut my clay layer, I'll still have mud in September.

My land has never been farmed, yet I have hard pan. How is that? Gravity, water, and time.

Not to belabor this but I've read a lot on the topic of hardpan and have gone to some seminars where it was discussed by deep thinkers on the subject. As I recall, the thinking was that ground left alone will clear itself of hardpan in around 11 years from the efforts of natural vegetation roots and the efforts of things that burrow like earthworms. As I recall, compaction was the result of vehicle, human or animal traffic and mostly when vegetation was removed. Damp ground accelerated the process while dry ground retarded it.

Hardpan is mostly around a foot deep and difficult enough that roots have a hard time penetrating it. Hard ground just may seem hard because it's not softer and fluffier but not hard enough to block roots? It is suggested the way to know to what degree you have hard pan is to scoop out a trench and dig down until you get below it. Home gardens were especially at risk because people can't wait to get things going in the spring and walk in them when wet and work the ground repeatedly.

Again, this would apply to clay ground because the smaller particles of soil could be packed tighter and dried harder. When I lived in the gravel soil of northern New England, compaction was not an issue anywhere. It just never came up and Ill guess it's because gravel soil cannot be compacted? In the clay ground I live on here, dried and packed soil from below streambeds can be formed and baked into bricks. Even clay subsoil from my yard, formed and dried in the sun, is difficult to drive a nail into and that's really before any compaction. Anyway, that's most of what I know about compaction.

 

[Jim Timber]

I have hundred year old "cart trails" that you need a pick to break into regardless of moisture content. Glacial till is probably different than the sea shell debris found in the coastal areas. We have so much gravel in our county they didn't bother mapping it out for pit sites - it's just a given that you will have gravel within 20' of the surface.

When building my swamp crossing road; I needed to allow rain to settle the fines and lock everything together. While not technically compaction, the resulting matrix is similar and it's hardness is as well. The belief that frost heaving will repair compacted soils is novel. Not all soil has sufficient water to have crystals form to cause heaves to occur. If there's only enough moisture to sufficiently bond the silt/clay to the larger particles, and it sheds the rest, you'll never have movement when the water turns to ice and expands - you need a rather rough aggregate to have that much infiltration to allow it to store the needed water to have the ice push out on the dirt. Your icecube trays don't break every time you use them do they?

 

[ponytug]

Then I primed with Rustoleum rusty metal prime srince I have had great results with it. I also picked up a can of Deere acrylic enamel green but that's a couple days off. Here's the primed parts.

Thanks for this tip! That is by far the best primer that I have used in a long time.

All the best,

Peter

 

[oosik]

Down south of me - in the wheat fields, also called the Palouse - they get a condition called caliche. It's a rock formed from calcium carbonate. I've seen really LARGE dozers try to rip it up. Some times it works - most of the times, not so much.

I have a single bottom moldboard plow. Used it quite a while before I found it can be stripped down to a single tooth ripper. It even has a carbide tooth on the shank. I've used the plow in this configuration several times to rip out roots and rocks. It's a Pittsburg product.

 

[sixdogs]

Down south of me - in the wheat fields, also called the Palouse - they get a condition called caliche. It's a rock formed from calcium carbonate. I've seen really LARGE dozers try to rip it up. Some times it works - most of the times, not so much.

I have a single bottom moldboard plow. Used it quite a while before I found it can be stripped down to a single tooth ripper. It even has a carbide tooth on the shank. I've used the plow in this configuration several times to rip out roots and rocks. It's a Pittsburg product.

Not many people know that you can turn a single bottom plow into a ripper. You used to be able to buy a ripper point specifically made for that purpose. Maybe still available.

You also used to be able to buy a modified ripper point that was like the cut up front end of a moldboard plow and it left more of a chopped up surface to better withstand erosion.

 

[oosik]

I don't still have the owners manual for my old ( 41+ YO ) plow. Could be there never was one. In any case - I only learned of it's ability to rip by disassembly. I was taking it apart to clean it up.

 

[CalG]

Just because it's not all about size ;-)

I built this "little ripper" some years back.

Cat 0 or Cat 1. Made from a box blade tooth.
It's answered all my needs . Pulls up stones and breaks up roots and soil from new garden spots. One time does it around here. It will stop the little tractors dead.

 

[oosik]

CalG - that's a fine looking ripper you made there. You can do some serious work with that tool.

 

[ptsg]

Just used my homemade 2 shank ripper yesterday. It's been really helpful loosening up some very very compact and hard clay.