Shattering hardpan

[chain]

Planning on establishing walnut/ chinese chestnut plantation. Old pine-pasture will be cleared in creek bottom. Soils fairly deep but seem to have hardpan about 12-15". How important is it to shatter this hardpan and what equipment may be best to bust up?

[tyb525]

I'm not sure how important it is to break the hardpan, but a subsoiler or middle buster would probably work.

[Magicman]

Subsoiling is like putting money in the bank.  Sometimes it can be done with a farm tractor.  Sometimes it takes a dozer.  Talk with your County Forester.

[Gary_C]

Subsoilers are the hardest pulling implement you will find. But if you have hardpan, they can be like Magicman said, money in the bank.

I can't imagine pine would grow on a site like that if you do have deep, hard pan soils.

Around here the freezing and thawing will take hardpan out of the ground eventually, but only if you stop making the hardpan. Using it as pasture or driving on it while wet are not good things.

[Ianab]

Best equipment would be a bulldozer with one of those honking big spikes on the back. Hire one for a day or 2 and just trundle back and foward until you have ripped the heck out of that hard pan.

Ian

[chain]

Subsoilers are the hardest pulling implement you will find. But if you have hardpan, they can be like Magicman said, money in the bank.

I can't imagine pine would grow on a site like that if you do have deep, hard pan soils.

Around here the freezing and thawing will take hardpan out of the ground eventually, but only if you stop making the hardpan. Using it as pasture or driving on it while wet are not good things.

.............There's an open grass area in the bottom with scattered pine, cedar, shrubby brush. Way back when there was a cow pasture here and farmer's garden and corn patch. Thought about mechanical post holing for seedlings , not so sure about 'hardpan' up on slope.  Contouring may be in order, but subsoiler plow I think can be borrowed also thoughts on rowing-up seedlings as using a levee plow also on contour. I really have issues with distubing the grass-mulch very much which has been good for erosion control.

[WDH]

It is absolutely critical that you fracture the hardpan.  There are forestry contractors that do this type of subsoiling operationally for large forest products companies, so there may be a contractor in your area that can do the job for you.  Call some of the local foresters and they can tell you if someone is already set up to do it in you area.  Hiring them to do it will be money well spent. 

[Dave Shepard]

We run a sub-soiler on our corn ground periodically. One really wet piece was dry enough to get the corn off in a wet year that would have normally gotten us stuck. I think the water can both go down into the ground, and, on a slope, run in the cracks to the low side of the field.

[Phorester]

Definitely fracture the hardpan. Plan out the rows where you want to plant the trees, then run the subsoiler, whatever, along those rows.  Another way - run the subsoiler in a grid pattern, plant the trees where the lines cross.

Do this a few weeks before planting trees.  Fracturing the hardpan one day and planting trees the next day does not allow for the ground to settle after the subsoiler has created air pockets underground.

[WDH]

Do this a few weeks before planting trees.  Fracturing the hardpan one day and planting trees the next day does not allow for the ground to settle after the subsoiler has created air pockets underground.

Several months and several good soaking rains post subsoiling and preplanting is important, so I want to reiterate what the good Phorester says.

The subsoiling can be done with a large farm tractor and a chisel plow or even a specialized subsoiler like the one in this thread.  http://www.forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,33920.0.html 

However, this type of equipment is not common, just like the owner Jake  .

[Phorester]

"However, this type of equipment is not common......"

A good point. Before I recommend a landowner do a certain thing, I see if such equipment, a specific herbicide, etc., is available locally.  In addition to talking landowners into doing it (which I have not been able to do yet) I've had a difficult time recommending subsoiling or ripping due to the scarce availability of such equipment in my area. About all I have found are the huge bulldozer rippers which excavating companies are reluctant to commit for this purpose. I have yet to find a local farmer who has one and wants to do this for other landowners.  Too busy to go into this sideline.

Same with plowing and disking fields to eliminate vole habitat before tree planting.  Most farmers here no longer use plows - they all no-till.

We foresters and other professionals have to realize that recommendations and advice do no good, frustrate landowners, and reduce our credibility if they can't be carried out.