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Post by Oatking on Oct 2, 2020 18:22:10 GMT -6
What are some crop production tips that have worked to eliminate or lessen the effects of soil salinity . I have noticed on drier years the areas are getting worse or areas beside ponds are severe. I think a lot of times all fields have this problem, but its not as apparent to the eye the damage. One farmer told me his tile drainage helped lessen the effects. what have you guys tried. |
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Post by Beerwiser on Oct 2, 2020 20:17:48 GMT -6
Manure has always helped. Finding some near by might be a problem.
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warreng
Full Member
Posts: 119 Likes: 8 
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Post by warreng on Oct 2, 2020 22:07:45 GMT -6
what seemed to help on visible alkalie spots was plain hay ... took the old large round hay / straw bales and shredded them out on top, and then worked them in with a deep tillage, about 3 or bales per acre, just enough to cover most of the ground .. had to do it twice three years apart ..
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Post by megrizzly on Oct 3, 2020 9:05:56 GMT -6
If your having issues with salinity, the first measure is to have an em-38 run over the field and zone sampled in order to determine the extent and severity of the issue. Often times the extent of the salinity is larger than just what is visible on the surface. The zone sampling will show the severity, but also an abundance of nutrients from lack of crop growth. This is one case where a vr prescription actually works well.
Background:
On a particular half section, there was the usual salt visible around a slough and other portions of the field were blamed on the mediocre soil quality. Turns out there were large flats of subsoil salts that were limiting crop growth to the point where only canola, barley, flax are profitable. We ended up being able to significantly reduce fertilizer rates in these areas due to higher than normal nutrient levels and increase seeding rates to improve plant counts.
Another field had issues in a couple spots along a road or so we thought. Turns out nearly about 75% of the the field edge along that road and the water runs across the field had issues.
Removing the water is the big one as getting a good crop established can be difficult. Tile drainage will aid in water removal, but its likely not a total solution on its own. The trouble spots may be farmable again or may be best to leave in a tolerant grass.
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Post by kenmb on Oct 3, 2020 9:13:13 GMT -6
 Show you what I am doing and why.
On my land those areas are really compacted and so rain doesn't penetrate, just rolls off. Nothing grows in the really bad spots, the next step to improvement is seeing kochia growing. That helps loosen the soil but often the kochia is sitting on a hard pan layer. Need to break up the compaction and get water to move through. Otherwise, the salts brought up by high water table during the wet times remain tied up near the surface.
So I am using this little 12" spaced cultivator and putting down as deep as it goes. 8 to 10". Hooked to the 175hp mfwd, where the land is really compacted it is a load on the tractor. When I get through the compaction and into where the crop grows (a matter of 10') it is like the cultivator isnt even there.
If you look at the first furrow in the picture you can see clods of soil and you can also see wet clay being peeled up. You can see a length of earth about 12" long with the imprint of the cultivator spike in it as it peeled the earth up. This is land with no water in sight and no where near being a low point in the field. No significant amount of rain this year. Yet the earth is wet here. Salts are tied up.
So I am trying to open up these areas. Not doing all my kochia spots. I am on the fence on that. But places where nothing is growing I am spiking. Been doing it a few years. Don't know if it is helping or if nature is taking care of things because I can't do any definitive comparisons. Planting peas and mustard in these places isn't helping but barley will take hold and grow. So putting emphasis on ripping up these places this fall where I will plant a cereal next year. The cultivator leaves things pretty rough so will take the field cultivator with harrow over those places next spring. Leave it ripped rough over winter.
Mixing organic matter in is basically the end goal. Rip up the compaction and get something in there to prevent soil from compacting again.
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Post by wheatking76 on Oct 3, 2020 21:27:33 GMT -6
i got some of these spots to i remember combining good wheat now nothing but kochia grows now, unsure what to do sometimes depending on yr I can get some wheat started there but then the weeds take over, the way the land is it is sloped down to a slough bottom, been just spraying it and working it up ever so often
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Post by SWMan on Oct 3, 2020 22:23:53 GMT -6
Start with good surface drainage, if you don't have that you will not win the battle. Ever notice how it's always saline next to poorly drained road ditches where water lays.
I have had good luck with putting a layer of good dirt over the saline patch after it's surface drained to get some crop growing, obviously this only works for small patches.
Seeding later can help get crop established in that type of soil.
Growing oats, barley or canola is batter than wheat or soybeans for example.
Tile drainage seems to be the ticket around here.
I have not had luck with ripping myself.
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wobleypop
New Member
Wheat, Barley, canola, soybeans, peas. Western MB
Posts: 2
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Post by wobleypop on Oct 4, 2020 12:13:12 GMT -6
Les Henry says tile drainage or sell it in the winter to get rid of salinity. I’ve found over the years that Mother Nature has a big influence on how well saline soil grows (or doesn’t grow) The perfect situation is frequent smallish type rains where your water table is decreasing throughout the year if that makes sense. I believe it was 08-2010 where the saline affected spots grew a great crop for this reason. The wet years 11 thru 17 has pushed so much salt to the surface from such high water tables it going to take some dryish years to get those spots growing better. Also any monsoon type rain seems to make those areas hard as concrete and they just seal off. Just my observations. A side note if you can get these spots dried up with a disk and then work them as deep as possible with a chisel plow and loosen up the hard pan it can make a difference as well
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Post by kenmb on Oct 5, 2020 9:34:07 GMT -6
Probably need to back up and identify the source of the problem. There are places that are naturally high in salinity and then there are places where the salinity isn't too terrible but then we aggravate the issue. I am dealing with the second. Local agronomist has the same thoughts. Salinity also aids in compaction and water retention. It's why I can have cracks in the soil from being too dry yet stick a shovel in one particular spot and come up with wet clay I can form into a ball.
During those wet years dad tried to seed every square foot. If he wasn't getting stuck then he was loosing revenue in his mind. So at the very least rut everything up to make sure you are trying. And then are the places super wet but not enough to leave ruts. Those are the places where he made all the turns around edges of an abnormally high water table. Which are also slopes with high clay content. So prime area for combination of compaction and retention of salts that would normally have returned to lower in the soil profile. And being a slope, any heavy rain runs over the top, carries sediment, and seals the surface like woblypop notes.
Have some kochia patches with high salinity but not compacted. Those I leave alone. Usually see some crop or weeds mixed in with kochia. Will drop the cultivator in there and if not breaking up clods or real wet then leave it alone. Pull out a kochia plant and see what roots it has, tap root or a ball of small roots spreading out. That will give you an idea.
The other thing I notice is the clods I am breaking up have white spots in them as well as stems and other organic matter imbedded in the earth. These pieces are more than a year old probably at least 3. But the moisture has blocked oxygen from getting into the soil so there is zero microbial activity happening. It's difficult to establish a crop in that environment. So, for soil that can be identified as compacted then loosening it up should help with those observations. The key is doing it when it is as dry as possible. And observe what is going. Because not every situation is the same.
I won't say definitively that ripping it up works. If I could pick my weather I could probably fix my issues that way. Maybe the weather is the bigger factor, or maybe loosening the soil to get air and water in is. Maybe it's both. No way to trial it. It takes a few years to fix the problems I have so it's not like I can see next summer exactly where I ran the cultivator this fall. Soil microbial activity takes a few years to get going in compacted ground so is it tillage or weather or crop practice that speeds it up. Need a research facility to say for sure.
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Post by kenmb on May 11, 2021 7:07:48 GMT -6
Follow up to what I was doing last fall with ripping as deep as I can with tool I have available. This area here is along a highway and they seem to have areas prone to this problem, but the same soil can be seen elsewhere. I just happened to think of taking pictures here because it is a large area. The land does slope away to a area where the soil is good and that slough to where the drainage occurs is dry right now so more than enough drainage. Don't take my soil science knowledge as fact, just trying to make sense of some things I read and then observe. The soil here I beleive is known as calcerous and this binds moisture too it and also ties up salts. It is also easily compacted. The compaction occurred mostly during the wet years where the sloughs were larger than normal in spring and so equipment was making turns further out than normal on soil is more clay based vs normal years where a guy is turning closer to a normal water line and therefore better soil (rich black) and not so easily compacted. Once compacted, water is retained and so the soil isn't flushed out. In the pictures you can see black soil where I just ran the cultivator over on the pass. It is not that this is rich soil, what you are seeing is moisture still tied up even though it hasn't rained for weeks and deep ripping should have made this area the driest to be found. The white is I beleive calcium that is normally bonded to the soil particles. This is what I want to get rid of. The hopes are to open up the soil and get water to pass through it vertically. If I don't rip it up the soil is so compacted and saturated with moisture that water will run over it rather than through it and never flush out the bad stuff. So we will see. Barley goes on here this spring. It was peas last year and rolling the land is just one one more step in the wrong direction.
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Post by shmiffy on May 11, 2021 11:50:59 GMT -6
Isn’t the white you see salt. Looks like a lower layer in the soil is coming out in the slope.
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Post by kenmb on May 12, 2021 6:35:35 GMT -6
Essentially it is a salt, "salt" is a pretty generic word as salt can be made of a number different elements. But for my basic understanding, calling it salt is close enough. A guy would need an analysis of what exactly is there if you were to treat it with adding some other product to create a new chemistry in the soil. When I rip up some ground and take a chunk of soil I can see white spots in it. In the pictures I posted last fall you can zoom into some of the clods and perhaps see the white spots. As well as wet clay even though it is late fall and about 4.5" of rain all growing season - the clay is still wet an inch down. You can also see organic matter packed in. This organic matter doesn't break down because the moisture is sealing it off from air and so any micro organisms. By ripping it up I am attempting to speed up the process of getting air and moisture into the soil to start flushing it out. Drainage tile would certainly help because you are removing moisture from below and so making it that much easier for water to move vertically and carry away those salts.
While it may be thought of as pulling salts up by ripping, the reality is those salts are bonded in the soil and not going anywhere as long as the soil stays wet. Moisture is locked in the soil I am dealing with, this can be read about in other places as a nature of calcerous soils and compaction of clay.
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Post by shmiffy on May 12, 2021 6:59:25 GMT -6
Would be interesting to see what the ground profile is 500 feet upslope from your wet spot . I’m thinking your wet salt horizon would be 2 ish feet down.
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Post by kenmb on May 13, 2021 6:42:29 GMT -6
That would be how I would view it.
Two things happened, the high water table pushed salts higher and then compaction tied those salts up at the new high level. Capillary action is mentioned often when deep ripping is offerred as a solution. The compacted soil is wet and keeps drawing moisture to the surface because evaporation is at the surface. This flow of moisture keeps drawing up the salts. Ripping it up is therefore also going to break the capillary action.
Picture is typical spot where I haven't done anything, it's just a small one. Baren, soil surface is compacted so water will just flow over the surface and salts now sitting on top of surface. This spot about 6 feet higher than the slough 60 feet away.
Anyway, thats the nature of my problem here. It's all on sloped ground and compaction of clay based soil from the wet years.
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Post by snapper22 on May 14, 2021 10:30:48 GMT -6
Have similar issues with a field. Pothole field with surface drainage downward but not adequate to prevent waterlogged soils. Think my issue can be remediated with ditching and cow manure. Funny you say calcareous soils because mine are that as well and sinking in them is unheard of when wet but spinning out gets you. Had soil tests done at 0-6 and 12-24. I was always under the impression my soils were acidic and neutral but that is just the top. The lower layer is 8 ph. Agronomist told me with all the moisture we’ve had has pushed up a lot of the calcium from underneath and raised the ph. Have been using sulphur on every acre last few years and think that’s maybe why my top 6” ph is holding steady. Nutrient tie up in the subsoil must be bad enough I bet.
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