HD Subsoiler

[Donn Hewes]

I want to make myself a HD subsoiler for pastures. Is anyone familiar with a “yeoman’s plow” Made in Australia for the purpose of aerating pasture land and also water conservation. Pitures of plow shanks can be see at: agrowplow.com. I think I could build a frame with two bottoms and wheels to lever it out of the ground. Probable need three or four horses to pull two bottoms. Some of these plows go down 16″ and more. I won’t start that deep with my soils. The idea is plant roots will grow more quickly at these deeper levers if it is opened up. Make your top soil deeper. Just an idea I am working on. Donn

[dominiquer60]

http://www.marketfarm.com/
These folks plan on having yeoman shanks for sale also. They recommend at least 25 hp per shank with the other type of subsoiler that they offer. I don’t know what the conversion to mules, horses and Halflingers is, but I imagine 2 bottom will take some serious real horsepower.

[Does’ Leap]

Don:

Keep us posted. I am interest in Yeoman’s techniques/theories on soil building. What about renovating a walking plow with a sub-soiler?

George

[Plowboy]

I think Erika may be right on this one. It may take more Horsepower than you think to pull one of these things. It also depends alot on soil type, consistency, and rocks. 4 horses may struggle with the load depending on conditions. Although on the brighter side it may give you an excuse to get more horses:)

[Simple Living]

In Sam Moore’s book Implements for Farming with Horses & Mules – A Modern All-In-One Manual, He shows a picture of an I&J 2 shank subsoiler being pulled in some heavy ground by what looks to be 8 Horses. Seems to me if my memory has not gone bad that White Horse also makes a subsoiler. May be worth looking at some pictures if nothing else.

Gordon

[Crabapple Farm]

A farm I worked at about a decade ago had a Yeoman’s plow. It’s a real nice subsoiler design. The draft is less with the Yeoman’s than with the typical chisel shank, because it is designed so that only the point is breaking soil – by the time the shank is going through, the soil is already fractured.
But in sod, two shanks will still be a good load, depending on soil and depth.
I would suggest putting rolling coulters in front of the shanks on your frame, so that you’re not tearing through the sod with the shank.
When I was using it, it was in vegetable fields that had been tilled for years. We were running three shanks about a foot deep with a ~25 hp tractor. To go down to 16 inches he’s drop down to a single shank in the middle of the bed – but he felt that even one “rip” per bed would open up the subsoil to roots.
One concern with the Yeoman’s is that it is a solid shank, so hitting a big rock (if you’ve got those) would send shock right up through the frame. I think both I&J and White Horse’s Subsoilers have trip-type shanks (spring and hydraulic, respectively, if I remember right). The point on the yeoman’s is small enough that most rocks would slide past, but if you’ve got rocks you’ll hit one eventually dead on.
-Tevis

[Haflinger Puller]

Donn,

If you can afford to why don’t you take a couple of acres out of production and plant Alfalfa. The roots go down about 15-20 feet, break up the hard pan, bring up minerals from deep in the earth, and gives you 4-5 harvests of hay a year, (about 4 to 5 tons of hay an acre) depending on the climate. Alfalfa does this all the while building your soil back up, and you not having to invest in a tool you’ll only use once in while at great expense in purchasing cost.

Alot of people don’t take into account how long that land has been farmed up there depending where you live and how long it was settled, nearly 400 to 500 years. The ground we farm has been going on over 100 years now, and we are taking ours out of production to build back up. I don’t know if you have blister beetle problems in New York, but here in Oklahoma high quality alfalfa hay can go from $7 to $10 dollars a bale. 25 -30 bales each cutting = $700 to $1000 dollars a year.

I love this forum. We can give each other suggestions and not cost anything other than experience that we each have gained over the years.

[OldKat]

@Haflinger Puller 9009 wrote:

Donn,

If you can afford to why don’t you take a couple of acres out of production and plant Alfalfa. The roots go down about 15-20 feet, break up the hard pan, bring up minerals from deep in the earth, and gives you 4-5 harvests of hay a year, (about 4 to 5 tons of hay an acre) depending on the climate. Alfalfa does this all the while building your soil back up, and you not having to invest in a tool you’ll only use once in while at great expense in purchasing cost.

Alot of people don’t take into account how long that land has been farmed up there depending where you live and how long it was settled, nearly 400 to 500 years. The ground we farm has been going on over 100 years now, and we are taking ours out of production to build back up. I don’t know if you have blister beetle problems in New York, but here in Oklahoma high quality alfalfa hay can go from $7 to $10 dollars a bale. 25 -30 bales each cutting = $700 to $1000 dollars a year.

I love this forum. We can give each other suggestions and not cost anything other than experience that we each have gained over the years.

Many of the farmers in Argentina do just this in about a 5 to 7 year rotation. I forget the exact rotation, but it is so many years in alfalfa, so many years in soy beans, then corn and then an annual grass and/or some clover, for grazing, then back to alfalfa. Something like that. Unfortunately alfalfa doesn’t do very well in our area, or I would try this myself.

[Mike Rock]

On the thread of bringing ground back into health, check Acres USA. They have just reprinted Newman Turner’s 1950’s book series on ‘Fertility Farming’, Fertility Pastures, Herdsmanship and Cure Your Own Cattle.

He emphasizes the use of naturally occurring very deep rooting plants to bring up minerals from deep down. Alfalfa gets a nod, but Chicory, Plantain, Sheep’s Parsley (just regular old parsley) and Burnet have deep root systems and become cow candy when pastured. The cattle know what is healthy, and a diet of straight Alfalfa is NOT healthy.

Barenbrug seeds at< http://www.barenbrug.com/barusa/EN/grasses.php>
has most of what Turner recommended, but I found the hot stuff in their site in England. They have a herbal (read, WEED that is useful to man) pasture mix that contains all the deep rooters.

I inquired of my local seedsman and he got interested in Turners work. He has now got a supply of these good seeds inbound US and will be selling them soon. If this sparks interest, let me know and I will get the name of the ‘source’ here in the US and put it up.

Most respectfully,
Mike Rock
Who is getting 25Kg of this seed to start the process.

Disclosure……no financial interest in this company….. they have an interest in MY money though…. 🙁 Stuff is expensive

[Donn Hewes]

Thanks for all the great comments. It has given me something to think about. As to plowing and planting, it might well be a good idea but it isn’t really for me. As we feed our hay to dairy sheep, don’t really want an alfalfa pasture. Not really looking to sell hay.

I still think the sub soiler has potential but not something to rush into. The problem is when you want to test an idea you don’t want to spend too much money doing it. I think I can get my hands on an old trailer plow with bad bottoms but all the moving parts work. I could try a home made shank or two on that for little cost. I won’t try for supper depth at first, maybe 8 – 12″ range. That is probably as far as I will get with a trailer plow but is also as far as I might want. Probably have to wait till fall or winter now. Will keep you posted.

Thanks again. Donn

[Joshua Kingsley]

We like to do a deep plow with our molboard plows to about 8 inches every once in a while to our ground here, though we have also found that chisel plows will some times go just deep enough to go where the others can’t reach. I think that a subsoiler would work well for some applications but one thing to keep in mind is water. In soil conditions like we have I would be hesitant to break the barrier for the ground water. That hard pan keeps excess water from welling up into furrows and for some of our rented ground that we just obtained, (read well raped for years with chemicals, no earth worms, dead as can be…) I have actually seen dirt float. I might mention that we also live on river bottom land, no stones, and lots of sandy loam, we are fighting silt sand mostly. so these conditions are not normal for Vermont.

[Donn Hewes]

Joel, What Kind of shanks did you put on? What ground were you in? Pasture? Were you pulling two shanks at a time or one? What were you pulling with? Hope you don’t mind a few questions. Donn

[newbeatfarm]

Hi Donn and everyone,
I came accross this thread while looking to find some information on HD subsoilers or chisel plows. I know this is an old tread but was curious if you did in fact end up building a subsoiler out of an old truck plow like you said you might Donn, and if so how it went.
Also thought I’d take the chance to introduce myself since this is the first post I have replied to, even though I have been enjoying reading these forums for a while. My partner Ken and I (Adrienne) have a horse powered vegetable opperation in Knox, Maine. We grow about 4 acres of mixed organic produce and currently have a couple of belgain mares and a percheron gelding who do any field work that we don’t do by hand. We’ve been working horses for about four years now, so are still pretty new at it and think the information on this site is super helpful and inspiring. We are on a relativly new piece of land, great soil but some of the ground had been in corn silage for at least 30 years before we got here. These old corn fields need a lot of work to bring them back to “living soils” again and we feel like getting in there with a subsoiler or yoemans plow would be hugely beneficial. Even with the dry spring we have had thus far in Maine we still have standing water in these fields.
We would love some advise on fashioning one of these subsoilers or a heads up if you see one for sale anywhere. We figure with our three horses one shank will be all they can handle easily. Hoping to find one of the old John Deer models if possible.

[Andy Carson]

Welcome Adrienne,
Great to hear about your farm. I am also generally curious about subsoiling. The concept makes intuitive sense to me but I wonder how effective it is and if (and when) its worth the effort. From a brief read, it seems that crop yields agree that subsoiling is effective in some situations and ineffective in others. I wonder if natural freeze/thaw or wet/dry cycles or the presence of deep rooted crops can accomplish the goals of compaction reduction and increased aeration without the high draft of a subsoiler. I wonder how long these processes would take to return the soil to a more natural state in the absence of heavy traffic and/or moldbard plowing… I am also curious about the use of spiked rollers to aerate pasture soil and how this compares to aeration from subsoiling. It’s alot shallower, I’m sure, but they would pull easier and would likely cover substantial ground and could be done more often. I guess in a nutshell, I am asking why one would subsoil, how does one know it’s going to be effective or worth the effort, and are there alternative tools that might accomplish some of the same goals at lower draft? I am not being critical, I have just never seriously thought about subsoiling with animal power before…

[dominiquer60]

If one is dealing with soil that has been compacted for years due to growing conventional corn, sub-soiling can be a quick way to fracture the hardpan. If you have time to wait for a deep cover crop that is great, but it can take a while for a similar outcome.

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