When is it better to plow virgin soil with a walk-behind tractor? Vegetable garden without hassle: raising virgin soil

Tillage in autumn is one of the most important elements of crop cultivation technology. In arid areas, this contributes to the accumulation and preservation of moisture in the soil; in excessively moist areas, it helps to eliminate it.

Besides, this technique improves the air and nutrient regimes of the soil, creates favorable conditions for the life of soil microorganisms, ensures the incorporation of fertilizers, and plays an important role in the fight against weeds, diseases and pests of agricultural crops.

Very often, novice summer residents are given land for a vegetable garden with a predominance of low-value rhizome and root weeds (wheatgrass, sow thistle, dandelion, thistle) in the grass stand. It is important to properly treat such areas and dig up the turf.

Disking

There is a classic formation cutting scheme perennial herbs and it is advisable to strictly adhere to it. The field is disked in two directions (first along, then across). This agricultural technique shreds the turf and partially turns it over. Very often, on heavy, waterlogged soils, disking completely replaces autumn plowing, especially for vegetable crops.

Disking is carried out using disc harrows, hullers and plows (without formation rotation). The discs are good at cutting horizontally located rhizomes and root suckers into small pieces and provoking them to germinate. It is best to repeat disking before frost sets in.

The second treatment is usually carried out after 2-3 weeks. after the first, or more precisely, after the crumbled weed seeds germinate. If the turf has been well cut since the fall, spring plowing will ensure good wrapping of the layer.

Perennial grasses are a good predecessor for many crops. It is best to place cabbage or potatoes in such an area. To avoid large labor costs in developing such a site, your actions must be rational.

It is advisable to divide the area in half, then mark the middle and dig the first furrow exactly in the center. Before this, remove a layer of turf 5 cm thick and lay it with the grass up at the edge of the second half of the plot.

Then, digging deep into the bayonet of the shovel, take out the layer and put it next to it with previously removed turf. The soil at the bottom of the furrow is loosened with a pitchfork to a depth of 20-25 cm. If necessary, fertilizers are applied at the same time.

Next, remove the turf at the site of the second furrow. and lay it on the bottom of the first, the furrow itself is covered with soil from the second furrow. This is repeated until the area is dug up. The turf removed from the first furrow is transferred to the last.

This way processing of a layer of perennial grasses significantly improves the water and physical properties of the soil. And most importantly, it destroys the compacted layer of soil, called the sole.

Such a sole is usually formed as a result of tilling the soil to the same depth (at the bayonet of a shovel). As a rule, such a soil base negatively affects the growth of many agricultural crops, especially root crops.

How to dig up soil

A simple digging of an area is not much different from the above, the only difference is in removing the turf. For the winter, it is recommended to dig up the garden without breaking up the clods.

This will help retain snow and accumulate moisture in the soil. In addition, during late autumn digging, pests that have gone into the soil for the winter end up close to the surface and most often die.

Minimum tillage

In agriculture, minimal tillage is widely used, the essence of which is reducing the number and depth of cultivation in well-cultivated areas.

For example, in areas of sufficient moisture, fall plowing (digging) for row crops is replaced by shallow or surface tillage.

This leads to a reduction in labor and energy costs, and a reduction in excessive soil compaction. Experts say that minimal tillage slows down the process of humus decomposition and thereby helps preserve its fertility.

The practice of growing vegetables without pre-cultivation of the soil has also developed. Her followers sow seeds or plant seedlings on a layer of compost scattered over the surface of the plot.

The basis of this practice is theory of natural restoration of soil fertility. According to proponents of minimal tillage, digging leads not only to the destruction of growing weeds, but also to the germination of numerous seeds in the soil.

Of course, the minimum tillage method has its own advantages: the level of fertility that develops under such a farming system contributes to the successful cultivation of vegetables, but it has been experimentally established that in dug up areas the yield and quality of vegetable crops doubles.

In conclusion, I suggest you watch the video that tells experience in putting fallow lands into circulation:

And now, finally, you have arrived on a new piece of land, on your own piece of field-meadow. Of course, there should be a vegetable garden of your dreams here, and you really want the harvests of vegetables and fruits to please you in the very near future. I want to? Let's do it!

Well, how can we not recall our Russian history, and not even very ancient times, when the best Komsomol members were eager to plow open the vast Russian expanses and heroically raised virgin soil. You and I will also raise virgin soil, but we will approach this process creatively and with a completely different inspiration.

If you look at a textbook on agriculture, virgin lands are called fallow lands that have not been plowed for more than 20 years, or that have never been touched by the long hands of civilization. You are lucky if your plot is located on such virgin land. The soil here is rested and has accumulated the maximum percentage of nutrients possible for the area. After all, as you know, the soil fertility in a meadow with perennial grasses only increases over time.

Let's begin to cultivate this land. Under no circumstances listen to random agronomist advisers and do not plow your plot with the help of the nearest village tractor! We will not raise virgin soil in that very historical sense. Let's approach the cultivation of our land carefully, preserving its natural fertility. Wisely distribute your energy and available free time. Select a small area that you will be able to take care of, and let's start turning this piece of virgin land into a fertile vegetable garden. Problems most often occur in heavy clay soils. Let's talk about them.

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The easiest way to quickly create beds. Clear the garden area by removing debris and raking dry grass. Dig the turf to a depth of 15 cm without breaking up any lumps. Leave the pieces of turf and soil to dry. After a few days, shake the sod by hand, using a hand ripper to help. Place the freed rhizomes in a compost heap to rot. And the soil in the future garden bed turned out to be free. Pour sand on top (buy a sand machine in advance), humus or peat, or sawdust. And dig it all together thoroughly. After a few days, sprinkle with complex mineral fertilizer and dig again with a pitchfork. That's it - the soil is ready. And you can sow root vegetables and herbs or any other vegetables.

Warm bed for vegetables. If you have a lot of last year’s grass, then do not burn it (it’s valuable organic matter!), but build a warm bed on which the vegetables will ripen faster. Dig a 30 cm deep “trough” under the future bed. First, remove the entire top layer of turf with a small amount of soil and place it aside. Then remove the entire bottom layer of soil and place it on a pre-spread film. At the bottom of the resulting hole, place last year's collected grass, any food waste, and fresh grass. Trample it down, sprinkle it with nitrogen mineral fertilizer, and water it. Place the removed turf on top, grass side down. Chop the top with a shovel. And pour the soil folded on the film, mixing it with sand and peat (or compost). If you don’t have any organic substances stored, it doesn’t matter. You can do without them, but you definitely need sand. Rake a high bed and sow vegetables. In the same beds, potatoes will grow magnificently, and their yield will be several times higher.

Do not plow a large area; it is better to make a couple of beds for now, but with preserved fertility and a good harvest. And after that, in place of other future beds, lay black non-woven material tightly on the ground and secure it well. In just 3 warm months, all the rhizomes will rot and the earth will turn to fluff! And by the end of the season (or next spring), you can, by adding sand, form beautiful beds or flower beds in these places. Good luck to you in the virgin lands!

miesia4yk about how to turn virgin soil into fertile beds, not idle. And very timely, because spring is already on the calendar, we urgently need to prepare materials that will allow us to create beds in virgin lands without breaking our backs and without hiring guest workers. And most importantly, without destroying the ecosystem of the site.

One should not think that the problem of virgin lands only concerns new areas. It also happens that in an old garden the problem of moving a vegetable garden, for example, to the place of a lawn, is brewing. And it also happens: you are tired of fighting with thickets of leeks and leeks. And there is also no point in driving even a walk-behind tractor, plowing and pounding while building beds.

The principle of gentle development of virgin soil is as follows: minimum digging, maximum stimulation of the work of microorganisms and worms.

So, what do we need to make a bed on virgin soil:

sharp shovel; pegs and twine; septic-treated boards; EM preparations (Baikal-EM, Extrasol, Humisol, and ultimately a microbial composting accelerator); plant and food residues; used corrugated cardboard, black polyethylene film.

Let's look at the example of a bed measuring 60x300 cm.

At the site of the future bed, using pegs and twine, we mark the bed in the north-south direction. At the same time, we also mark paths along the line of the bed with a width of 70-80 cm.

We cover the area of ​​the bed with corrugated cardboard so that 2-3 cm extend onto the paths. We put together a box from boards 20-25 cm wide and 60x300 cm in size. We install it directly on the cardboard. It is the cardboard that will become the main obstacle to weeds.

We put a mixture of plant and food residues with half-rot manure or compost into the box; it is permissible to use old sawdust. You can use dry bird droppings or dry horse manure instead of manure. The mixture should be slightly below the level of the side.

We remove a 7-10 cm thick layer of soil with grass from the paths with a shovel and lay the layers on the bed with the grass facing down. Of course, it is better to remove the largest roots from these layers.

Water the bed with hot (50-60˚C) water, and after 20 minutes - with a solution of the EM preparation. Cover tightly with cardboard, pour hot water over it again and cover with black plastic wrap.

Such a bed should be prepared as early as possible, but at least 2 weeks before sowing. A couple of days before sowing, you need to remove the film and cardboard, slightly loosen the top layer, filling in wood ash (2 cups for this area). Water with green fertilizer.

How to make green fertilizer if there is still little grass? Take a bucket, fill it with nettles and any grass that is already green, fill it with warm water, add a couple of spoons of old jam, a crust of yeast bread, 2 spoons of EM preparation, let it stand for 2-3 days in a warm place. Strain and dilute with warm water 2 times. Water the bed and cover it again with film before sowing or planting seedlings.

Such a bed will need to be watered as needed, the plantings will need to be mulched (you can mow the grass before flowering), then the humidity will be maintained, the air exchange will be good and microorganisms with worms will multiply. It is important to add either green fertilizer or EM preparations to the water for irrigation 2-3 times per season.

What about the tracks? And we immediately fill the paths with sawdust, which we first mix with dolomite flour (2-3 tablespoons per bucket of sawdust). Over the summer, they will need to be watered a couple of times with a solution of green fertilizer. The paths will be clear of weeds, it will be convenient to walk on them, and a factory for the production of worms and microorganisms will be formed under them.

By autumn, the beds will settle a little, but before winter they should be mulched generously with coarse humus. The main thing: no digging. A minimum of weeds - rhizomatous ones will not break through the cardboard and die, and annual ones that fly with seeds are easily pulled out.

So, let’s better honor the virgin soil that has been turned up, let’s respect the feat of our ancestors, and in our garden we’ll save our energy for other things.

By the way, there are also special techniques for planting a garden in virgin lands without exhausting weed control and digging.

How to make a vegetable garden from virgin soil at the dacha

Virgin land is an uncultivated plot of land that has not been plowed for more than 20 years. Such soil is rested and maximally full of nutrients necessary for plants. However, summer residents are more concerned about the possibility of using such a plot for a vegetable garden.

The better way to process virgin soil

It is quite possible to turn virgin soil into fertile soil for growing garden crops. The first stage is plowing the land. It is best to use a tractor, but this is quite expensive and is not possible in small areas.

It is possible to process virgin soil with a walk-behind tractor, but its power may not be enough for areas that are too hard. In this case, the procedure must be repeated several times (first superficially, then deeper), or in a wet state, so that the equipment does not slip. The advantage of using any technique is less labor costs and faster results.

Processing small areas is carried out manually only with a shovel, but this is quite hard work. Mechanical devices and hand plows are not used for plowing virgin soil, since the strength of one person is not enough.

If digging with machinery is not possible, the soil is dug up manually with a shovel, lifting it to a depth of 15 cm. The lumps are not broken, but left to dry, after which the turf is shaken off the soil, helping with a hand ripper. Plant rhizomes are placed in a compost pit to rot.

How to prepare the soil for planting vegetables

After the first processing of virgin soil, you cannot immediately begin cultivation. It is necessary to further prepare the land. If the soil was processed using machinery, then weeds are not selected from it, as with manual digging, but are plowed up along with the soil.

After plowing with a walk-behind tractor or

To improve the structure of the soil and saturate it with useful microelements, green manure plants (mustard, lupine, oats, rye, alfalfa) are planted. When the greenery grows, it is mowed and additional digging is carried out using machinery or manually.

Winter crops are planted in winter. In early spring, after the snow melts, the third plowing is carried out and the plot is planted with garden crops for the first time.

After manual digging

When cultivating the land manually, you can use the previous method, but more often they do it differently. The land freed from turf is treated with herbicides to kill weeds. Then sprinkle with peat, humus or sawdust and dig, mixing everything.

A week later, the soil is fertilized with complex mineral fertilizers: potassium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, nitrophoska, superphosphate and dug up a second time. The land becomes suitable for use as a vegetable garden.

What to do if you need to process a large area manually

When processing a large area of ​​virgin soil by hand, a popular method is dividing the area into small segments, which are covered with a double layer of dense material at least 5 cm thick. You can use cardboard, straw, black film or spandbond, and press down with bricks.

The ground overgrown with grass is left covered until autumn, when the greenery under such dense mulch has time to rot and rot. Thanks to humus, many earthworms will appear, which will loosen the soil, and the soil will be easier to work with. The disadvantage of this method is that the beds are ready for planting only at the beginning of the next season.

It is possible to prepare the land using inverted turf. Areas overgrown with grass are dug up manually with a shovel. Potatoes are planted in the resulting holes, which are covered with dug up turf, turning it over with the grass part down.

The grass in the ground rots, thereby fertilizing the potatoes and promoting their growth. This method allows you to harvest the crop the first time you plant it. But the timing of planting potatoes must be observed.

If space for beds is needed for urgent planting, and it is not possible to wait until next year, you can use the option of bulk beds. The prepared fertile soil is poured directly onto virgin soil, and the rows are dug up and treated with targeted herbicides. Plants with a shallow root system (zucchini, cucumbers) can be planted in them.

Preface

To plow virgin soil, or simply land that has not been maintained for a long time, today it is not necessary to break your back; everything is done using convenient special equipment - a walk-behind tractor or a cultivator. What are these devices, and how to use them correctly?

Ensuring a high level of productivity largely depends on the quality of the work carried out on plowing the land. In previous times, this procedure was extremely labor-intensive and took more than one week. Now the work of business executives has been greatly simplified, since with the help of a walk-behind tractor or a motor-cultivator, you can plow a large area in just a few hours. Working with this technique has its own rules and features.

Plowing a large area with a motor cultivator

Many novice farmers wonder what is the difference between? According to knowledgeable people, there are no fundamental differences between these two agricultural devices. However, some features can be highlighted. A cultivator is a mechanism for cultivating land for subsequent crops, improving the soil structure and ensuring an optimal level of mixing of soil with fertilizers applied to it. In addition to soil cultivation, walk-behind tractors can perform a number of additional tasks such as mowing grass, planting, hilling a vegetable garden, harvesting crops, or clearing an area of ​​dried leaves.

Thus, the walk-behind tractor is characterized by wider functionality compared to a motor-cultivator, and it also has more power, which is important when developing virgin lands, for example. But the weight of the cultivator is much less than that of a walk-behind tractor, and working with this type of equipment is much easier and requires less physical effort. This device also costs much less. Therefore, if we are talking about carrying out exclusively arable work on a relatively small area, then many business owners, choosing between two types of equipment, give preference to a motor cultivator.

The method of mechanical tillage has a number of undeniable advantages compared to traditional manual tillage. First of all, plowing with a walk-behind tractor or cultivator requires significantly less physical and time expenditure, which increases the productivity of agricultural workers tens of times. Also, thanks to this technique, it becomes possible to carry out a number of additional works in parallel with plowing. For example, you can simultaneously loosen the soil and also add the necessary fertilizers to the soil. In addition, tillage with a walk-behind tractor or a walk-behind cultivator ensures more uniform and deep plowing of the land, improves its condition and structural quality.

The soil is saturated with a sufficient amount of oxygen and reaches the optimal degree of moisture. In addition, the soil is cultivated, which slows down the growth and development of weeds. According to statistical data, when plowing is carried out mechanically, the yield indicators in the cultivated area almost double. You can also plow the land using a tractor. However, this is not available to everyone due to the high cost of this type of equipment. In addition, arable work with a tractor can only be carried out on large and open plots of land, near which there are no trees, bushes or buildings.

Plowing land with a tractor

Despite all the advantages of walk-behind tractors and walk-behind cultivators, these mechanisms also have certain disadvantages. For example, mechanical tillage is contraindicated in areas filled with weeds with a deep root system. This is due to the fact that during arable work using walk-behind tractors, the surface soil layer falls off to the side, and this contributes to the proliferation of weeds.

In addition, the soil plowed with a walk-behind tractor requires additional treatment - clogging. This problem is especially relevant when working on hard soils. Also, with regular mechanical tillage, damage to the fertile soil layer may occur. The situation can be improved by parallel application of mineral and organic fertilizers to the soil.

To get the most favorable results when carrying out arable work using a walk-behind tractor, it is recommended to follow. First of all, it is necessary to correctly configure the mechanism by adjusting the width and depth of plowing. These indicators largely depend on the area of ​​the cultivated area and the quality characteristics of the soil. However, according to knowledgeable people, there are adjustments that are considered optimal in most cases.

Carrying out arable work using a walk-behind tractor

The width of the plowed furrow should be no more than 50–60 cm. As for the plowing depth, its ideal indicators are 10–15 cm.

When cultivating hard soils, the depth of the furrow can be increased to 20–25 cm. To do this, you need to achieve such a position of the apparatus so that the plow rests on the ground with its entire base. Otherwise, it will either go too deep into the soil or, on the contrary, be pushed out of it. To attach the plow itself to the mechanism, it must be raised approximately 15 cm above ground level. Usually special stands are used for these purposes. It should be emphasized that the quality of subsequent arable work largely depends on the correct settings of the walk-behind tractor or cultivator before its operation!

First of all, the site must be properly prepared by clearing it of weeds, stones and various types of debris. After this, stretch the so-called orientation cord along the first row of the site. This manipulation is necessary in order to make the arable row as even as possible. Then prepare the device. To check how correctly the adjustments have been made, it is recommended to plow a test plot of a minimum area. Moving to the main area, place the walk-behind tractor or cultivator at the beginning of the furrow.

Cultivator treatment of a trial plot of minimal area

When starting arable work, slightly deepen the device into the soil, lightly pressing it downwards. Next, follow the walk-behind tractor along the guide cord, holding the handles of the walk-behind tractor. Make sure that the mechanism runs in a straight line and do not allow it to sink excessively into the soil. When the length of the furrow comes to an end, you need to make a U-turn and continue plowing in the opposite direction. To cultivate the land as uniformly as possible, it is necessary to ensure that the speed of movement of the mechanism is low, and the rotation speed of its cutters, on the contrary, is quite high.

When carrying out arable work, you can move both in a circle and in a zigzag manner. We can say that it all depends on your personal preferences; only experienced specialists advise taking into account the shape of the treated area. If the site has a rectangular shape, then circular plowing would be the ideal option. Owners of a square plot are recommended to give preference to zigzag digging. When cultivating a vegetable garden, it is best to create beds along the perimeter of the plot and place them parallel to each other. This will facilitate the process of plowing and subsequent planting work.

In addition, many business owners are faced with the problem of excessively hard soil, which cannot be processed even with the help of special equipment; this is often typical for virgin soil. What can be done in this case? Knowledgeable people advise adhering to a system of stage-by-stage tillage. The soil also becomes softer and more pliable when wet. Therefore, carry out arable work either after heavy rainfall, or after preliminary intensive watering. In addition, you can try to develop a virgin soil layer using a walk-behind mill. To do this, you should walk along the same strip several times in a row, gradually deepening the device into the soil.

When the work is completed, take care to clear the mechanism of soil, grass and other debris. Then rinse it with water and dry thoroughly. This is necessary to ensure the longest and most reliable operation of the walk-behind tractor or cultivator!