Drain tile does help

Took this picture today. Can you tell where the tile runs are? There is 4-6 rows of tall corn over the tile and ~12 rows of not so tall in between.
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Where are you located? Same story here in Northwest Ohio in the old Black Swamp? How far apart are the tile lines apart?

Near Baudette MN they tiled a couple of large fields a few years ago, 2 times since they have gotten crops in and the adjoining land was to wet to plant, it payed for them!

Lot of fields like that around here, corn is a "little" better over the tile lines but will it be good enough to make anything?

Tile is 4rod apart, ~60ft. It was put in when I was a kid 40yrs ago. Behind me in the pic is the woods and the tile dumps into a ditch that goes thru the woods. It runs mostly in the spring and fall when its wet(of course) but not at all in the summer. It was running today.

I'm near St Johns Mi. I was down in OH a few weeks ago Bought a tedder near Portsmouth. I saw alot of yellow soys and short yellow corn all the way down.

I wonder if we could get those drains to empty way down here in NC.

Hey onefarmer, I'm about 9 mi north of SJ. We did not get the rain that you guys a few miles south got. We got a bunch one time. Most of it soaked through though. Our rough spots are where the culverts cross under the road and have a low spot around them. I see some very poor corn around the mega dairies in Gratiot that insist on spreading manure during fall and spring when the fields are wet. Pack it down like concrete, watched one of them trying to get the field cultivator in the dirt after it dried out, was having a heck of a time getting it started in the ground. That corn was planted a month and a half ago and is about 10" tall and about 4-6' between any nearest plant. That was on some high ground too lol.

Ross

I went up to Alma and west on 46 to a funeral at a church then across to 131. I saw alot of that short late corn all across there. Also saw potato fields being irrigated and in bloom.

Corns doing good in Crawford county Ohio the beans are bad even with tiled fields to much rain

My soys were very yellow until a week ago when we started having more sunshine and less rain. They have doubled in height in a week.

One field had a real good crop in it....of foxtail! Foxtail was 2ft tall soys were 1ft. I just couldn't get it there to spray them. I finally was able to spray last week, foxtail is now yellow, except where it was taller then the sprayer

I'm in western Iowa, it's rolling to somewhat level here. I've been trying to dry out a couple of spots that are peet at the bottom of a hill, we're having luck with them 15' apart and then going back in and using a backhoe to put short lines in between. These are 1-2 acre spots. It's helping the ground below it and I think we'll get them farmed next year. Otherwise I've had great luck running 1 tile at the toe of the hill. I'm a firm believer in tile. Ground that I couldn't get planted 2 years ago when it was wet the crops look nice and green this year when it's wet.

In 2008 we got a lot of rain in a very short time. There was about 3 inches up against basement window. When the water went down I had corn stocks in the yard. You can see the neighbor's 40 acre field sloped toward my house. Even the yard slopes toward the house.

One acre-inch 1 acre-inch = 27,154.285 gallons [US, liquid]. We had about 10 inches of rain in 24 hours. Putting field tile around my house wouldn't do very much good with that many gallons. Your pic proves my point too. There is only so much good tile can do.

I spent many days removing flowers from around house, boss wasn't happy at the time. Angled dirt, so water runs away from house. Even had to remove a lot of dirt from yard to make water run away from house, instead of towards it. Now when it rains I have a system of drainage ditches that make one big river. A lot of water flows over the hill. All my ditches are grass covered and can be mowed, basement stays dry.

In this area, the current trend is to blanket tile the field at about 3-6 feet apart.

The funny thing is tile pays as an investment but at the same time the money that you should be using to add tile gets used elsewhere. At least that is how it works for us. If I could hold the money aside I could be laying 10's of thousands of feet easily and improve the growing conditions in years such as this one.

Tile may not have been the answer for you but for a great many farmers they would see more field productivity, decreased lime and fertilizer expense, and less machinery expense (broken final drives on combines.

Last we put in was 30ft apart back in 1988. Local guys are now doing 25ft. One guy put them in on contour so they are fairly flat and then underground irrigates thru them.

Tile won't prevent floods, but it sure gets rid of the flood faster. If the field in my pic had the tile every 30ft or closer the corn would be sooooo much better.

And one more thing that really helps on a wet year and a DRY year , Deep ripping . Breaking up the hard pan layer . We started doing this a couple years ago. We saw results on one rented field that has some wet weather spots that always made it hard to get thru and on the top of the hill there was a tough clay layer that was hard and even with new shears on the plow you could not get more then five or six inches deep and corn did not do well at all and really was a waist of time even planting up there . We found a landoll chisel that someone barn yard engineered into a deep tillage tool by using five DMI parabolic shanks and set it up like a DMI Tiger . We put new seven and a half inch Tiger points on it and went at it . DMI block man told us that we did not have enough tractor , for the most part he was correct as i could not get the 14 inches in one pass but i could get 12 inches . So i had to go over it twice . Yep i found rocks that have not seen the light of day in a million or so years but they are no longer in the fields , the wet spots are 90% better and that dry hard knob now grows corn . This year with the monsoons is the one that will impress ya , last fall i went and ripped all the silage corn ground and i was able to run the full depth on the first pass but we added a extra piece to the upper shanks for more soil movement in the top six inches . We were vary impressed with the results once again (1) over the winter and spring we did not have any erosion that we would have had if we had done anything to the fields , (2) thise fields we the first to dry out and warm faster (3) we have NO wet spots in these field this ever . The corn is the same from the tops of the hills down in the bottoms where it is usually wet . The water is going down thru into the sub soil . Your hard pan is what is killing you , you need to break up the hard pan layer between the tile lines so that the water that is laying between the lines can drain to the lines . On a dry year your corn roots can go deeper for the moisture deep down in the soil , a corn root can only go to the hard pan. What also so i can tell ya is we need another 50-60 more ponys and atleast 5-8000 lbs more weight and four wheel drive as our turned up 1066 does ok but still not enough I can run first high but even with radial duals loaded and a full rack on the nose i will either spin out or stand her up or it will spin the rim inside the tires . Done the latter four times now.

You are right, tile can't prevent floods and it can't handle a lot of water in a short amount of time. Your pic is proof of that.

I even put two runs of tile in my little river system. Covered it with sand and gravel. Ran the two tile over the hill. That couldn't handle all the runoff in my 2 acre yard with just a a 1 inch rain.

Has anyone noticed a shift in weather patterns. Like last winter, east coast got dumped on time and time again as though the weather patters travel slower, sit and spin dumping on a small location. Like out flooding, front doesn't move very fast and a lot of rain in a small place. Then the people out west, California get nothing, 5 years in a row. I'm not calling it global warming, just a shift in weather patterns.

onefarmer,
Been thinking about your tiled field. With no till farming, is it possible your soil is compacted? In the 50-60's when I was a kid on the farm, dad plowed the old school way, also chiseled plowed, and in places that collected water he used a sub-soiler to break up the hard pan.

I was thinking that when you installed the tile you also broke up the hard pan. I remember when we used a sub-soiler through a part of the field where water was standing, it was like pulling the plug on a tub full of water.

I used the black plastic field tile for rain gutters on house. I ran it to a low spot in yard. After about 15 years tile was full of dirt. I dug it up and replaced it with solid pipe. Just wondering how long will it take for your field tile to fill with dirt like mine did?

Do you use a sub soiler too? How deep?

This tile is the old clay type and was installed in the early 70's when I was a kid. The outlet is just behind me emptying into a ditch running thru the woods. It isn't very deep is one problem. Another is it's 4 rods between runs(not close enough.

I did plant it no till this year but last several I broke it up with a disc/cultipacker, one trip and then field cultivator two trips. Hasn't been plowed in 4-5years.

It's just been sooooo wet. Normally the tile doesn't run at all in the summer but it's running a 1/4 to 1/2" stream right now.

Hard to believe that 1/4 to half stream is nearly enough water to make that much of a difference when 1 inch of rain per acre is 17000+ gallons of water.

Run a sub soiler between tile and see what happens.