Agri Contracting for Pasture: All About Farm Deep Ripping

24 February 2023

Deep ripping mechanically separates compacted soil layers, but care must be used to achieve good results. Deep ripping employs powerful tines that penetrate between 35 and 50 centimetres deep to dislodge dense soil layers. It is necessary to consider tine spacing, working depth, shallow leading tines or discs, soil moisture level, time, and soil type. Each season, not all soils and crops respond favourably to deep ripping. Benefits typically endure for approximately three seasons, but with regulated traffic systems on light sands, they can continue for more than ten seasons.

What Is Deep Ripping

Before planting, the soil is prepared by performing a deep ripping. A soil ripper is a large, strong, subterranean tiller that helps ease the soil compaction that arises naturally over time due to farming. For vineyards, before a new one is established, cover crops are normally sown for one to two years to restore soil nutrients, and then it is time to harvest. Soil ripping improves soil structure, drainage, and the depth of the grapevine root system. In certain wineries, for instance, soil ripping is employed for the first time before planting a new vineyard on a site that has never been used to nurture grapevines and after removing sick, ineffective grapevines. In the last 40 to 50 years, soil ripping has gained traction in Australian agriculture and the wine industry. After farmers and winegrowers noticed that their grapevines had difficulty penetrating clay and serpentine-rich soils to produce deep roots, it gained current appeal.

Management Options

Deep ripping works best in sandy soils where roots need to grow deep to reach the water. Deep ripping is especially helpful when it is used to break through a compacted pan or clear layer that is limiting root growth. This gives roots access to soil water not limited by this layer.

If the soil below the depth of ripping has problems like acidity, poor structure from sodicity, or subsoil salinity, deep ripping won’t help as much as it could. Adding things like lime or gypsum may be necessary to stabilise the soil. Behind deep ripping tines, it is possible to put lime into acidic subsurface soil, but this is a slow process that is hard to do on a large scale (shallow leading tine rippers are ideally suited for this).

Prices And Gains

Grain yield responses to deep ripping on deep sands and sandy piles of the earth have tended to be large and reliable, especially in areas with high and medium rainfall (more than 350mm). Depending on crop rotation and soil type, the benefits of deep ripping these soils seem to last at least three years.

Deep ripping of heavier soils like sandy clay loams, loams, and even sodic clays has often been thought to be less reliable. Recent research has shown that the yield response to deep ripping can be big the year the soil is ripped, but the benefits of ripping can often be short-lived on these types of soil. The amount of mixing depends on how the ripper is made. Adding organic matter and gypsum to dispersive soils and limiting or preventing re-compaction with a controlled traffic system, especially when these soils are wet, helps keep the soil structure and benefits deep ripping. Deep ripping of duplex soils can be helpful when the sandy or loamy “A-horizon” is shallower than the ripping depth. This is because clay soil can be mixed with sandy topsoil to increase surface soil cation exchange capacity and decrease water repellence.

How We Know Deep Ripping Works

Production usually goes down when roots can’t grow as fast, or it takes more energy to grow through compacted soil. When the compacted layer is removed by deep ripping, plant roots grow faster and deeper. This means they can get more water and nutrients, improving crop yield. How much subsurface compaction hurts root growth depends on many things, especially the type of soil and the amount of compaction. Moderate soil compaction makes it harder for roots in sandy soils to keep up with water and dissolved nutrients, especially nitrogen, as they move through the soil profile.

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