O.T. Soil Compaction

I want to hear from a genuine farmer; Is soil compaction an issue if the soil is dry? I disced my garden with a small 3 point disc and left some tracks in dry soil.

What do you consider a "genuine" farmer?

Soil compaction is always worse when worked wet plus extra trips across it when wet makes it worse.Fall tillage makes working ground better in the spring. If you are leaving tracks your disc must be narrower than tractor.Scott

your worrying about nothing. i presume this is a small tractor like a ford 8n or some such small tractor. those tractors dont have enough weight to compact anything. that kind of disk wont even do a decent job on hard ground. need to use a roto tiller for nice job.

Drag a harrow or old set of bed springs or a hunk of chain ling fence across it will smooth it up fill in and wipe out the tire tracks. Ready to plant. Try to limit the trips across your garden to the minimum, Your tires do compact some and the more trips the more compacted areas you'll have. Not a genuine farmer, so just my experience. gobble

where do u live. in my area, mother nature takes care of compaction like take with a hard freeze!

Not me, I can kill cactus! LOL

Thanks to all. The plot is small and I had to maneuver on loose soil, leaving tracks. I live in southern Missouri and the ground freezes in excess of twelve inches most winters.

Soil compaction is caused not only by the weight of the vehicle, but also by tillage. Compaction starts below the depth of the tillage. No till reduces compaction but that may not work for your situation.

(quoted from post at 04:25:23 10/04/18) Thanks to all. The plot is small and I had to maneuver on loose soil, leaving tracks. I live in southern Missouri and the ground freezes in excess of twelve inches most winters.

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That's not what soil compaction means. A Google search on "hard pan" will do a better job of explaining it that I can. No need to worry in your case.

A trip across a field or any ground causes compaction,more so when moisture is present, but still dry soil will be compacted.

You had just worked it so there are air pockets in the loose soil so all you are doing is getting rid of the air pockets. The biggest compaction problems coles from using a chisel plow or deep ripper type of implement when ground is wet and it just mashes its way through instead of fracturing the soil. Just take a handfull and see if you can make a ball out of it. If dry you cannot make that ball and when you let go of it the sample will just fall apart. Now take that same sample and put some water in and try it and you will see how compaction is made. Kids years ago made their marbles out os soil just by mixing in enough water to keep it in a ball that can be made like modeling clay that a lot of kids played with years ago before electronichs came about. Just try making that marble and see how hard it will be to bust it when it has goten real dry. A different test for you to understand compaction. take a metal baking pan and put the dry worked up soil in and press till you cannot anymore and see if it holds togeter, dry it will not and no compaction, now add some water and see hoe it will hold together, when it starts holding together is when compaction starts and the more moisture the harder the compaction will be. Then put in a freezer till completly froze then take out and let thaw out and refreze and repete a few times and you will see that the the contants of pan that were hard as a rock when you put in freezor will now be crumbly. after drying out at room temp. You cannot compact completely dry soil, it has to have moisture to make the glue to hold soil particals together. All on dry soil that you are doing is getting away from the air pockets between soil particals.