A lot of farms experienced heavy floods this spring, and are having heavy rainfall now thanks to the recent hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. This increased moisture level means that soil compaction is a bigger problem than ever. This is a good time of year to check your soil’s compaction level.

It’s easy to find out if your soil is compacted – all you need is a shovel and a couple of fingers. Dig a hole a foot deep or so, and feel around for dense soil layers. If the top layers are dense, that’s probably the result of compaction from rain. Dense layers farther down, up to eight inches or so, is probably compaction from repeatedly tilling to the same depth. The hole test can’t tell you if compaction has been caused by traffic in an area, however, because there’s no one specific dense soil layer that forms. You can spot compaction caused by traffic in areas where there is standing water, or where crops aren’t thriving the way they should.

Tillage is the primary way to break up compacted soil. If you decide to till in order to address a soil compaction issue, it’s critical to wait until the soil is dry. Soil needs to be dry enough to shatter for tillage to have its full effect. A standard till will be enough to take care of surface compaction, but if you have a subsurface compaction layer, you will need to use a chisel plow, and operate the plow’s points below the compaction layer. Heavy compaction from traffic will require ripping or subsoiling. However, ripper or chisel plowing done in moist soil is a complete waste of time – all you’ll do is cut a trench, leaving the compaction untouched.

You can avoid making your compaction problems worse by following a few simple guidelines. Most importantly, avoid working the fields when soil is wet. Dryer soils have much higher load-bearing strength – wet soils will compact like crazy when you take that heavy tractor out there. Wait a day or two and let soils dry after rain before you work a field. Keep you vehicle load weights as low as you can – obviously, heavier vehicles compact the soil more. If the axle load is approaching 10 tons, that will cause compaction down below the depth of tillage – try and avoid using machinery that heavy. Most of the compaction happens the first time a machine goes over a piece of ground, so control traffic of heavy machinery, and keep to the same track. When you’re in harvest mode, do your unloading off the field to keep traffic levels down. And of course, keep your soil quality high by leaving crop residue on the ground.