More Tillage Comments

Lots of ground was getting worked or had already been worked today. I had the unfortunate experience of needing to sample some of it that was very rough. Below is a DMI Tiger. It generally leaves the ground in rough condition which is not a huge problem to me, but I don't like the cause of the roughness. Usually the ground is too wet to till when it is really rough.
Today, this field was not too bad. The untilled parts seemed very moist, but for the most part ground was in reasonable condition on this field. I also sampled some fields where the soil was tilled when it was still gummy. Gummy is not good. It was not only very rough, but I suspect there was some compaction at the chisel points and maybe it was even wet enough that the tire tracks caused some deep compaction.

This field was disked fairly shallow. It was gummy at about 4 inches. This disking keeps the compaction close to the surface. It also gets some soil on the stalks and gets them to start decomposition. If things dry out enough to do some deep tillage that would be OK. If not, I think a soil finisher could make an acceptable seedbed in this field in the spring, especially for soybeans.