Wow! I can't believe it is Spring already!! I had all these great post ideas I wanted to do this winter, and now winter is over and I have a lot of catching up to do.  The fields thawed out early this year and we have already finished the field work. We've even started planting the barley! Click here to check out our 2016 crops. For now, here is a post on something very beneficial to our farm: Drain Tile Installation.

One thing we have been doing for a couple years that has really improved our soil is installing drain tile. We usually install it in the fall before the ground freezes, or in the spring after the ground starts to thaw. This last fall after sugar beet harvest, we were able to rip in some drains in a couple of trouble spots in our fields.

Why we use drain tile-

We install the tile to drain excess water from the fields. In some cases, there is so much water that it makes the soil unproductive. Plants need the right balance of water and air in the soil, and the drains help that happen. The drains also help flush the salts through the soil. A high quantity of salt will hurt plants, so this is very beneficial! The white in the picture below is not snow- it is salt. This is soil that has never been farmed before, so this will definitely help make it more productive! 

How we install the drain tile-

The tile we use is corrugated plastic pipe with small slots in it. We use both 4” and 6” pipe. We install our tile with a drain tile plow. This thing is awesome!! Instead of having to dig a trench, lay the tile in and cover it back up, this has a plow point that cuts through the ground. The tile then feeds through it laying it where it needs to go at the depth you want. With the accuracy of GPS, the plow adjusts to make sure the tile is laid at the perfect slope for the water to drain. We either run the smaller drains into a larger main drain (what we did at this location above), or run it to an open drain, and then bye-bye excess water!

Here is a short video of our drain tile installation: