Let's talk about the 13 most common mistakes of farmers when cultivating the soil, and also try to find practical ways to solve these problems.
1. The first mistake is the importance of embedding straw in the soil.
There is such an opinion among the landowners: "After harvesting, the field should be clean of straw, as it looks carelessly from the outside, and it is impossible to sow in such soil!" At the same time, they forget to add an additional dose of nitrogen, which leads to its deficiency due to the nutrition of soil bacteria.
If plant residues are embedded, then 30 kg of ammonium nitrate must be added to each ton of straw. So each ton of grain of the same winter wheat will give almost an equal share of straw. With a yield of 5 t / ha, it is necessary to add 150 kg / ha of saltpeter.
There is another option – to leave straw on the soil surface. Pre-shredders on grain harvesters should be adjusted to evenly distribute small pieces of straw (5-6 cm). This will make it possible to use spring harrows for surface tillage (up to 5 cm) without embedding straw. Disc harrows with fine depth adjustment can be used.
2. The second error follows from the first. Plowing in summer to plow straw into the soil.
The negative impact of such a technique is that after harvesting the crop, in fact, the soil is already over-dried and the use of this agricultural technique turns out large layers of soil, which are even more dried up in the sun, especially in the southern regions. They can be crushed at best only after a good downpour or after a series of three or four mechanical treatments of the soil. And this is a large loss of moisture, fuel costs.
The only option where the main treatment can be used in the summer is plowing to the depth of the rhizomes of a field overgrown with weeds. It is used in fields with weeds of the rhizomatous agrobiological group (doob, creeping wheatgrass) to turn the rhizomes to the surface of the earth with the aim of drying them out and removing them further.
3. The third mistake, also a consequence of the first. This is a deep disking of stubble with heavy disc harrows.
The consequences are the same: the eversion of huge blocks, the desiccation of the surface layer of the earth.
Heavy disc harrows can be a good alternative to the plow, provided that the last treatment is carried out in the autumn, with the presence of a leveling roller behind the discs. This will provide favorable conditions for the preparation of sowing of both late spring crops and early spring crops.
4. The fourth mistake is the use of agricultural machinery with a small working width.
What does it affect? Primarily on performance. Equipment with a larger working width are able to process more area per working hour.
Secondly, lower consumption of fuel per hectare due to increased speed, greater working width and lower depth. In practice, diesel fuel consumption is reduced by 1.5 - 2 times. So plowing can be replaced with deep disking, cultivation with a spring harrow with a width of 10 meters.
Soil tilling machines with a smaller working width (3-4 meters), making more passes, more often compact the ground with tractor wheels, which leads to the inevitability of using deep tillage to restore the equilibrium density of the soil. So, with an increase in the working width to 10-18 meters, the frequency of the compacted track decreases 2-6 times, which means it is possible to carry out deep tillage less often.
5. The fifth mistake is leaving stubble for the winter without tillage.
There are cases when farmers do not have time to harvest on time or leave abandoned fields after a lean year. They are not tilled in autumn to prepare them clean in winter, planning on spring tillage. The logic is this: "Here we have a direct sowing planter – there is no need to cultivate the land!". As a result, the stage of weed development in the spring period is ahead of the stage of development of the sown crop (the same sunflower). The result is that the herbicide did not work well, the soil is again over–dried due to the presence of weeds, etc.
Photo: December, but the corn is still in the field
6. The sixth mistake is non-compliance with the timing of the main tillage.
It happens that such weather conditions develop when it rains in the autumn period, and it is also necessary to plow (for example, for spring sowing of vegetables). And only when the weather conditions improve, they plow, forming layers that stick together like plasticine. This means that the soil is not ripe for cultivation. Physical indicators of the ripeness of the soil for tillage is its disintegration into micro aggregates of 4-10 mm. To do this, they take a lump of soil in their hand and throw it from the belt level, the earth has completely disintegrated, which means the soil is not waterlogged and not dried, and has optimal humidity.
The best solution in such a situation would be to plow the soil under frost, when the ground freezes to a depth of 5-10 cm. Agrotechnical quality indicators will be the absence of ridges (to enhance the effect behind the plow, a heavy steel bar is adapted for leveling), the land has a fine-grained structure. Thus, deep tillage in this state should be the last treatment going into winter. Eliminates the need for leveling the chills with a heavy cultivator. Otherwise, the loosened earth after plowing is compacted back by means of a track from a heavy tractor.
It is important to take into account the fact that the soil freezes from the presence of moisture and under the influence of low temperatures in January and February. And if you plow, large blocks of land are formed that do not meet agrotechnical requirements.
Photo: Consequences of untimely plowing
7. The seventh mistake is underestimating the reception of harrowing of winter crops in the early spring period.
This agricultural method was actively used earlier as a means of combating weeds. With the development of pesticides, this treatment was practically not included in the cultivation technology.
The use of spring harrows (as a modernized type) allows you to close the moisture in early spring on crops. And in the southern regions, moisture is the main limiting factor in obtaining high and high-quality yields.
Under the condition of clean fields from weeds, the herbicide can not be applied, with constant monitoring of crop sowing and taking into account the economic threshold of harmfulness of weeds.
8. The eighth mistake is the use of obsolete technology.
Farms with a small area in the arid zone, engaged in field cultivation, as a rule, are equipped with equipment that does not correspond to their capacities: obsolete heavy tractors; heavy disc harrows, etc.; heavy cultivators. These farms bury themselves with deep tillage, high costs of diesel fuel and low crop yields.
The only solution, perhaps, will be to change the thinking of the farm owners themselves in relation to this. And decide on a small area to risk getting a better result due to shallow tillage, the use of lighter tractors, the use of fertilizers.
9. The ninth mistake is the lack of proper quality control of soil tillage.
It's no secret that there are machine operators who like to save diesel fuel during mechanized work! There are plenty of ways: for example, to slightly lift the hydraulic cylinder to reduce the depth of plowing or disking, leaving narrow untreated areas along the edges of the field where it is impossible to control the quality of the operation. Ask your mechanic what he measures diesel fuel in - in centimeters or in liters? Therefore, constant monitoring is needed.
10. The tenth mistake is the lack of understanding of what mini-till and no-till are.
To come to no-till requires 10-12 years of accumulation of crop residues on the soil surface, requires the allocation of technological track in the field, etc. And having only a direct sowing planter is not enough. Mini-till is a tillage system in which the maximum depth is 6-8 cm maximum. Heavy cultivators, plows, and heavy disc harrows are being replaced by faster machines. In this case, the stubble is finely ground and evenly distributed over the soil surface, with minimal embedding in the soil.
11. The eleventh mistake is a strict adherence to the classical tillage system.
It is characterized by the fact that farmers too often carry out deep tillage in the fields, every year, the high proportion of fallow land in the structure of sown areas (more than 20%) leads to the fact that the level of fertility decreases due to the mineralization of humus after plowing the land.
12. The twelfth mistake is a strict adherence to a minimal tillage system.
And the denial of the classical system also leads to limited decision-making in non-standard situations.
What is needed to solve this issue? And the answer lies somewhere in the middle. To do this, you need to understand what processes are taking place in the soil, monitoring its humidity, specific density, the content of available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the amount of humus, which crops will be placed in the structure of the crop rotation – and all this will determine its fertility. Based on this, you need to be flexible in choosing one or another tillage.
13. The thirteenth mistake is the absence of text fields in farms.
This may be a small area of a field of 1-2 hectares, conditionally, where various land cultivation options will be observed. For example, a control strip according to classical technology, the first option is tillage with a disc harrow, the next is tillage with a spring harrow, etc. And record observations, take photos, etc. Because soil and climatic conditions vary from place to place.
Keep records of costs and yields. But the main indicator of evaluating the efficiency of production will of course be the net profit from the area.
Summing up, one thing you need to understand is that the soil is a living system formed as a result of hydrological conditions, temperature conditions, living organisms, plants and human activity, and its influence is usually the greatest.
