Has anyone run into this? I have 1 field that is really frustrating me. The first year I planted it, using an ATV and groundhog max no less, I got a really good stand of peas/beans in it. Winter plot did ok. Came back in the spring and planted eagle beans in it, and zip. Sprayed it with liquid lime and added fertilizer, nothing. The beans never got more than about 6 inches high. Soil tested it, low PH, so added ag lime last summer. Fall planting did really good. Have a pretty decent stand of clover in the field on one side, but beans/peas/buckwheat/sunn hemp still aren't doing much this year, even with me adding fertilizer. I added innoculent with the Eagle beans too.

Thinking I need to get my subsoiler out there and just rip the field up, and replant it and see what happens. It's an established field, probably been there 20 years. It's the larest field I have. I have gotten plenty of rain. Soil tests called for 2.5 tons of lime per acre. PH was 4.6. Maybe I will rip up the half that doesn't have the clover stand on it and see how it does compared to the other side.

Thoughts?

Sounds to me like soil pH is a glaring problem.........Have you ever taken a shovel and dug a hole to look at the soil layers??....There could be a number of reasons why things arent growing well.

If you had a problem with hard pan these would be your symptoms:

A) Shallow Rooted plants that are not drought tolerant (I would say not your problem given the rainfall we've had)

B) Wet fields that drown the plants.

That's pretty much all there is to it from that perspective. The fact that your plants aren't growing could be about 1,000 other things as well. If you can only get your beans up 6 inches I would say they drowned (option B) if you truly have a problem with hardpan.

Liquid lime is a joke. Hardpan is just compacted soil. If youll turn or chisel your soil pretty deep and get your ph right, you will see a difference. You dont have to turn or chisel it every year, but if you start off with hard ground and only disk or till, youre breaking up 4-6 inches. Liquid lime is snakeoil. You might also try some sodbuster raddishes in the fall. They are supposed to go a long way toward disrupting hardpan, so ive heard. 4.6 ph is absolutely horrible. Get it to 6.5-7.0 and subsoil and you will be happy with the results

Ive got a couple of spots with 8.2.

Nothing likes to grow there either

The field is higher in the middle than the edges, so I doubt water would stand on it. I am going to subsoil it and add more lime and see if that doesn't help. I put a good bit of lime out on it late last summer. I am going to soil test it again and see where it is.

JMO....but before I went and "just did stuff" to do it.......I'd try to get someone out there who really knew soils and have them assess the situation for you so that you could apply whatever management practice you needed to in order to alleviate the specific problem you're having instead of just throwing darts at the wall.

I doubt I could get the club to cover that. Would the county extension agent do it?

I hauled 24 tons of ag lime out there last August and spread it by hand. Disked it in, planted and fertilized and disked again to cover everything. All the fields did really good. All the fields I soil tested were in the 4.6 to 5.1 range and AU said add 2 to 2.5 tons per acre. I probably don't have 10 acre's of fields to plant, so.... I should have been right there, and I was hauling it in a dump trailer, so I could get a pretty good field placement depending on the load I was hauling.

I hear you on adding more cost…….However, like Goatkilla said there’s a lot of different variables that play into why you might be having issues……If you spend the next few years guessing at what they may be then you’ve cost yourself money just the same……AND time. People spend a lot of $$ “just doing stuff” to see if it fixes the problem. I’m not trying to single you out or sound harsh……it just always jumps out at me when folks say they are gonna do this or that to see if it fixes their issues without having assessed any symptoms that point toward that being the problem. I think many folks would be money ahead in many situations to have someone help them if you dont have a definite handle on what's going wrong.

Spend the $7 for a soil test before doing anything else. Lime takes time to do it's thing.

NO ONE should ever question your work ethics, that's 48,000 pounds...by hand.

Maybe his method and intelligence but certainly not his tenacity or work ethic

Ag lime takes a minute to start working. I bet if youll break it up and get you a good deep seedbed, youll like the results. Report back what your new soil sample says

I put out a ton one day with a hand spreader, no way in hell I'd even try that

Yall are seriously dedicated to your food plots

Dang man, you answered your question with the topic, rip it. When I bought my place, the owner left a three tier 13’ chisel plow,I use the heck out of it. Can’t bank moisture or have root growth in hard ground

24 tons of like spread by hand! Screw that. I don't even like picking up a 50 pound bag of corn to put in a feeder.

dont rip it, drill plant it. Cheaper on fuel and will get better results.

Well I got some of the folks to help on a work day, but by that time I had planted more than half the property. I took a tote, and put it on the back of my disk, and hauled it to where I wanted it and spread it by sliinging with a shovel. It works pretty good. Then I disked the heck out of it, add seed and fertilizer and disk it all in. Some of it I spread right out of the dump trailer, you know on the small fields. My title is Vice President of Greenfield Development. LOL!!

I am going to soil test it again. Since this field is so large, I really need it to be productive. I need to check with the coop and see if they will lime a single field for me with their truck. I think they charge about $30/ton to deliver and spread it with the truck. Then if its off, they can just add what I need to it. And that will give me some insight into the other fields too.

What I learned last year is 24 tons of ag lime isn't a whole lot. I droppped 3 tons on one field, and that didn't go very far. In your mind you think there needs to be a decent layer of it on the ground, but really that isn't what happens.

I put out 1600 pounds of pellet lime on a field I didn't get to lime last year, and that takes a while even with a 3pt spreader. This was on maybe half an acre. Thats my ideal solution, but some of my fields you just can't get to easily with stuff like that. And that may be how we deal with it, just put pellet lime on the fields each fall and see where they test out in the spring.

I am doing all this with a sub compact tractor too. JD 1026R.

Do you have any pics??.....What is the soil like?.....Is it sandy?......Heavy clay? ......Can you dig a hole easy with a shovel?