ABSTRACT
Our family partnership farms approximately 1,300 acres near Firebaugh, California in the central San Joaquin Valley in Fresno county. The primary soil type on our farm is a heavy Oxalis clay along with some sandy river bottom soils. In the fall of 1997 we were faced with early rains that could reduce our window of opportunity for conventional tillage.
In the fall the heavy clay fields dry out and crack. Fracturing occurs across the beds and down the furrow. These cracks can be 16" to 24" deep. In our typical tillage practice we rip or subsoil our fields 28" deep. Working the ground wet causes compaction that affects the crop for the entire year, so we either wait for the ground to dry or work in the spring. With this in mind we decided to stop our heavy tillage work and we would try to incorporate our cotton stalks and five tons of poultry manure into the old cotton beds on our remaining 400 acres.
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