JA – discing, rototilling and plowing all turn the soil over. So the good, living stuff underneath the surface gets put on top only to degrade substantially while the poorest part of the soil on top is now underneath. A double whammy.
Also all three of those methods produce hard pan making for poor water drainage. The water will hit that hard pan and run off.
It turns out we had severe hard pan in spots. Why only in certain areas, I don’t know. Our first season we had J shaped carrots because of it. Now we have great looking nice sized carrots.
A spader basically lifts up a piece of ground, breaks it up and sets it right back down leaving the soil structure intact. Very similar to double back digging, which is big with micro, organic type gardening.
To tell the truth I didn’t know what hard pan was until we got that spader. And in all the extensive research we did well before this venture it was rarely mentioned let alone explained. So much so that I thought it must be some kind of rarity obviously not worth my time. I was wrong, it’s actually a pretty big deal here where we are. Most seasoned farmers are as ignorant of it as I was. The bigger commercial, mechanized farms have it for sure and they know it. That’s part of the reason why they need so many soil supplements and weed killer every season. Maybe you’ve seen those monster chisels pulled by some 250hp behemoth. Those are specifically to break up that hard pan if only temporarily.
We are still learning a lot and I’m far from an expert. There’s lots of info on the web for sure. I could find some links to get you started if you’d like.
