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stoughton WI

Being as I'm not expecting to get to big of a pumpkin this year I've been doing a little experimenting on a few things. One of them was trying to keep from getting a crust on the top of my patch.I tried broadforking it to get more air into the soil. I've also used a cultivator in different spots. I'm finding where I have broadforked the soil is alot harder and has more of a crust than where I had used the cultivator (the weasle). I hope others will chime in with some different experiences.

6/5/2018 8:06:56 PM

Anamosa, IA BPIowegian@aol.com

I found that the more I till, the more the soil crusts. A rototiller powders up the soil, wrecks soil aggregation and structure, kills worms, burns up organic matter faster. I have been adding more Cedar Rapids compost and that helps. My worm population is way up, more worms than in untilled soil when I'm digging fish bait. I'm basically just turning the soil with a 5 tine manure fork, smacking the clods with the fork and letting it go. Rain mellows out the clods. But my soil is mostly silt, a little sand and almost no clay. My system would not work with clay, it would make bricks.

6/5/2018 8:36:43 PM

Upa Creek, MO

I had the white crust one year and I believe that was the same year my calcium was 10 times what it should have been. It was off the charts from loading up on gypsum and dolomitic limestone for years. It looked like the great salt lake as soon as the surface dried. Rest, covercrops and OM added has helped.

6/5/2018 10:12:14 PM

Grittyville, WA

I have been adding straw/hay or alfalfa spreading a thin layer after tilling. Composted grass clippings too. I just cover any bare spots. Overall it helps with weeds. The organics dont last long in my soil but they do help the texture and water infiltration and with potassium.

6/6/2018 1:43:34 AM

Syracuse, NY

with all due respect, if you pour a glass of water on your soil and it does not pool, i'm sure the air is getting into it just fine, and whenever i need to level off the soil to plant a plant out, it only takes < 30 seconds with my gravel rake to remedy the soil surface to look completely different from those < 30 seconds ago---but, continue on---eg

6/6/2018 5:00:14 AM

Syracuse, NY

i wish ANY of my soil texture looked like yours right around your plants, lol--

6/6/2018 5:05:19 AM

Grittyville, WA

How do you water rick? The finer the mist and the lower the rate the better maybe in terms of not creating a crust. A gravel rake would certainly break a thin crust. Or add lots of sand and peat.

6/6/2018 7:39:43 AM

50 Acres

I also till, and yes it gets hard by late summer. Peat moss is added each year. Sugar beet meal has been added the last 3/4 years and I have more earth worms than ever. soil here is clay

6/6/2018 8:26:42 AM

South East

broad forking is way to much work.

6/6/2018 9:08:19 AM

Westmoreland, KS

My clay soil gets hard as a rock after a good rain, I tried no till, tilling, broadforking but it always ended up hard as hell. However, last year I used Ron Wallace's method of poking a fork in the ground ahead of the plant as it grew, this worked well. Then this year I built a greenhouse, added perlite and Organic matter. Soil is damn soft at the moment. I think keeping the heavy rain off of the area makes a huge difference.

6/6/2018 9:14:14 AM

Torrance, Ca.

I'd try what Glenomkins said Rick. Less pressure will help!

Also the organics he stated.

6/6/2018 10:22:35 AM

Torrance, Ca.

Will help loosen things up.

6/6/2018 10:26:25 AM

New Berlin, PA

I find my soil crusts, but remains fluffy underneath. I go through with a pitch fork well ahead of the plant to slightly aerate, and to break up the crust so I'm not burying with big hard crust clumps. Also, seems to keep weed pressure down if I don't mess with it much. The more I rake and pitchfork, the more I have to come back with the hoe for weeds. One last thing I noted, areas I added promix and/or peat to the patch seem to stay lighter and fluffier.

6/6/2018 10:53:48 AM

NE Wisconsin

I have the exact same thing Rick, any amount of water/rain and there will begin to form a crust on the top of the soil. I always assumed it was the amount of clay.

Breaking open the top layer makes a huge difference. We go through and cultivate our corn fields right as the corn nears axle height on the tractor. In the week after you cultivate the corn always seems to explode with growth. If some fields are too wet to cultivate there is a noticeable difference in growth.

6/6/2018 11:30:50 AM

Nampa

Spraying a bit of humic acid on on soil is supposed to help with light crusting. If your pH is high, a bit of sulfur is helpful also. We band spray humic acid and thiosul above sugar beets to help prevent crusting and to help germinatation / emergence.

6/10/2018 8:19:04 PM

Deer Park, WI

Curious what your Ca and Mg base saturation levels are. higher relative Mg tends to make soils tighter. Calcium can loosen them up.

Bone up on the benefits of glomalin. Another natural strategy to improve soil aggregation, increase water infiltration, reduce crusting:

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1144429.pdf

6/12/2018 9:35:33 PM