Could someone explain a ripper to me

What is the purpose of a ripper? I know it breaks up the hardpan but does it help with drainage? We have none tiled clay ground that is driving me crazy with 2 wet falls. Would ripping it help get the water away?
 
We ripped dryland wheat ground so that the low spots would drain. but I always wondered if it would be worst if the water was coming up in the ground. I have a new place with surface water, so not sure what to do. Might try one pass next spring.
 
I know in Michigan a law was passed earlier this year, you must make a one call to 811, prior to ripping any field over 18 inches with high pressure transmission lines running through it. F.Y.I.
 
Back in ag class(1970) there was a book that was promoting deep tillage(ripping)to be as good as tiling. It just won t last but about five years. If you can rip with the natural drain of the land, I would do it in a min. just to try it. I will be watching the corn fields next summer where the pipe line came through, that is deep tillage.
 
Look in to a subsoiler with a moleball to help drainage. The moleball is a cast iron torpedo shaped ball that hooks to the bootom of the shank on the subsoiler with a short chain. It opens a passage in the ground to help drainage. John deere has em.
 
The purpose in my area is water retenion in the sub soil to prevent losing the water to runoff. Deep ripping in the fall captures the winter rains.
 
If there is drain tile down below, ripping can help in some tight soils. The first year I had a ripper I ripped up a wet hole in heavy black soil that has tile but doesn't drain quick enough to prevent crop drown out. Ripped it in the fall and forgot about it. The next spring we had some heavy rains and that wet hole filled up as usual, but in three days most of the water was gone where usually it would take a week so the ripping must have helped get the water down to the tile. One field I farm has very heavy black soil that dries slowly so I ripped it 17 inches deep. Yes, it was an honest 17 inches, and took the top off of a drain tile. I certainly did help get the water to the tile but not the way I wanted to see it happen. Jim
 
They were doing that with the sub soilers here many years ago. It was a pretty good sized bullet they were pulling along and we always commented about the poor gopher who lost his way in one of those tunnels.
 
Idiot that farmed the place next to mine used a ripper on it one year. All he really did was find a bunch of BIG rocks. He pushed them to the side of the fields and left them. I picked up the lease a few years later, and still hit them in the hedgerows from time to time. Actually, I've built a rather nice pile of them n a couple of places....
 
(quoted from post at 21:53:34 11/17/14) What is the purpose of a ripper? I know it breaks up the hardpan but does it help with drainage? We have none tiled clay ground that is driving me crazy with 2 wet falls. Would ripping it help get the water away?

My fields used to pond with the just 1/2" of rain. Ran a single shank V-ripper with a 10" wide tip and a mole ball through the fields. Had the top link shortened up to make the ripper lift the soil.
End of ponding and you can see the more intense green stripe of plant growth in the ripper's path for 2-3 years.
 
Ripping also lets plant roots penetrate deeper, that will add more humus deeper into the ground.
 
Steve: To do much good ripping you need it to be dry for a good shatter of the hard pan. Also if you can pull the ripper with some speed it will work better too. Matter of fact an inline ripper require some speed to create a shock wave effect through the soil.

IF your ground is wet and has some roll to it you can rip it the way you would put ditches in it and it will help it drain better for several years.

You also can have a hard pan created by tillage.

Take a 3/8 rod about 3 foot long. Push it down into your ground. You will be able to feel it go in easy until it hits any hard pan layer you have. Then it will push harder until your through the hard pan. If you measure how deep you are when you hit the hard pan and where you are through it you then know how deep you need to rip. You want to be a few inches under the bottom of the hard pan.

Example: You hit the hard pan at 8 inches deep. You break through it at 10 inches deep. You then should run your ripper at 12 inches deep to shatter the hard pan.
 
I use my ripper for digging out roots, breaking hard-pan, breaking up ice, and even digging potatoes. Also as a parking brake when on steep hills in the woods. 1960 Deere with # 35 ripper.
Also as a tow hitch.
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A Hay King subsoiler works for me. Go sideways on the hills when the clay is somewhat dry in the spring otherwise the slice closes up behind you. By the end of the summer the ripped places have dried and shrunk so you have these ravines that catch the water running down the hill when it rains.

Other thing about this subsoiler is that there is very little surface disturbance. I used to use a chisel on my haypatch preparation but now use the subsoiler then the disc and then the spike toothed harrow.

Works for me.

Mark
 
A long time ago, late 70's, early 80's, my dad had a new John Deere 8630, dueled up with big tires, and I had a DMI ripper. My old 7520 was busy doing something else, so I took the 8630 to the field with the ripper, was running it deep in 3rd gear low. The hitch pin broke and that 4WD John Deere took off like a AA Fuel Dragster! I don't remember having whiplash or a sore neck, but I did mash my head against the back cab window.
Interesting things can happen on the farm, no doubt. :D
 

I have a section of red clay that is like concrete. so if you don't rip it every year, nothing will grow on it.. Always rip before season to hold the spring rains.

Have some black gumbo that I rip occasionally to stimulate the forage and it also holds more water. Land that has been ripped will stay greener 3 weeks longer into the summer no rain period (6 weeks) and produces more hay.

Have a sugar sand area, and no point ripping it at all. Dang lucky not to bury the tractor.

Can use a heavy sub soiler, or the newer renovators... They leave the hay pasture smoother than a subsoiler.
 
(quoted from post at 21:53:34 11/17/14) What is the purpose of a ripper? I know it breaks up the hardpan but does it help with drainage? We have none tiled clay ground that is driving me crazy with 2 wet falls. Would ripping it help get the water away?

Letting a ripper slip during church is not recommended.
 
Then there are "root plows" Go along the edge of a field that has a tree line. You know, where the trees sap the moisture and fertility out of the first 12 rows of crop. You run this ripper really deep, cut the tree roots, and it solves the root problem for two or three years.

Gene
 
You must have the Houston Black Clay "gumbo" that I have here
and had near Houston when a kid. Up here I don't usually get
enough rain for it to go to the gumbo stage and live on a hill
besides whereas down there everything was flat.

And on the word "Gumbo", one of my favorite foods with shrimp
and Coonass sausage made and marketed for just such a
purpose.

An added benefit of my Hay King is that it has coulters like used
on a moldboard that slice through the Coastal Bermuda shoots
and makes new plants. Take that plus the added water and
throw in some N and away she goes.

Mark
 

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