john in la
Well-known Member
Before I started reading on this site I had never heard of tiling farmland.
The practice is impractical for us in south Louisiana because of our high water table.
We have great Iowa top soil from river sediment so excessive water is our main problem.
So this is how we handle that high water table and over 60 inches of rain a year in row crop fields.
First we dig ditches across every field several hundred feet apart.
You can see the spoil to the left of the ditch from them cleaning out the ditch.
Then we disc the field.
A moldboard plow is not needed in this soil type.
They do chisel plow every now and then for compaction.
Then we laser level the entire field.
Before laser level they used a grader implement that had several opposing grader blades.
Once we get the field level we plant on raised rows.
Once the rows are set we go threw the field and cut cross ditches with a implement that throws and scatters the dirt.
These small cross ditches run to the bigger ditches in step 1 and can be cut anywhere we see standing water.
The practice is impractical for us in south Louisiana because of our high water table.
We have great Iowa top soil from river sediment so excessive water is our main problem.
So this is how we handle that high water table and over 60 inches of rain a year in row crop fields.
First we dig ditches across every field several hundred feet apart.
You can see the spoil to the left of the ditch from them cleaning out the ditch.
Then we disc the field.
A moldboard plow is not needed in this soil type.
They do chisel plow every now and then for compaction.
Then we laser level the entire field.
Before laser level they used a grader implement that had several opposing grader blades.
Once we get the field level we plant on raised rows.
Once the rows are set we go threw the field and cut cross ditches with a implement that throws and scatters the dirt.
These small cross ditches run to the bigger ditches in step 1 and can be cut anywhere we see standing water.
