Rolling baskets.

Regular readers, I appreciate your support and strive to give you something new every day.  Beware that the timing on my posting is now on a field work schedule.  I post after supper when I get home.  Sometimes that can be 8PM or later. 

I guess today is a good day for my annual rant about rolling baskets.  Soil finishers with rolling baskets are all the rage these days.  You can take some pretty rough ground and make it look like a lettuce bed.  Why do I have  a problem with that?  It makes your soil very vulnerable to crusting and puddling especially when you have low residue soybean stubble to start with.  As you know, crusting can seal off sprouting seeds from the oxygen they need to make it to the surface.  To avoid crusting, lots of residue and some moderate clods are in order. 

Soils with 15% clay or less are very common in our area.  When the rolling basket hits those soils, they look like floor.  And you know what happens to flour when water hits it.  Yes, paste.  You get my point. 

On a different note, some nice prairie soils north of Carlinville sold today for $10,075.  It is good soil, but I think it might benefit from some addition tile.