Hi my name is Francisco Arriaga,
specialist with the University of
Wisconsin Extension service and the
UW department of soil science, and today I want
to talk to you about different devices
or things you can use to detect soil
compaction. You might have seen a
previous video where we showed you how
to properly use a penetrometer to detect
compaction, so here we want to show you
different options if you don't have a
three-four hundred dollar penetrometer
available for you. So you can use
other things to help you assess soil
compaction the field.
The first option is the use of a knife,
that would be the simplest way of doing
it and for that I have a colleague of
mine who's going to demonstrate that in
the soil pit. Of course looking for
compaction is much easier when you're
actually in the soil pit. When you look
at this pit you'll notice that we see a
lot of plated structure here at the soil
surface. We are in a wheel track so you
can see where that those wheels have
compact the soil down, and instead of
having nice granular structure, that
cookie crumb structure, that really small
ball type structure, that we like to see
the soil profile. Instead of seeing that
we see a lot of this plated type
structure, or very large structure. You
notice the whole surface wants to act as
one solid unit so we have significant
compaction coming down to this profile
you'll notice as we come down through we
gets us to have a change in texture here
about nine inches it starts to get
really standing you've probably heard
that textural changes it wasn't quite as
greedy sounding there is something
really gritty sounding here in a second
francisco will talk about how he can
find that with one of the penetrata
meters at about a nine inch layer here
we go from what is a nice a horizon that
has some compaction again we see instead
of granular structure we see this play d
type structure a very large blocky
structure down into it a decently
structured a horizon that is very sandy
and texture and we're actually going to
be picking that up when we use the
penetrometer here in a second but one
thing I do want you to notice is when we
look at the soil profile even though i'm
talking about it being compacted as that
soil surface is consolidated acting as a
single layer notice we still have decent
root growth coming down through the soil
profile and as we go through the rest of
our video series talking about cover
crops and how to improve soil health
this is the kind of reaction that we're
talking about helping to reduce some of
this
unlikely are undesirable physical
structure that we see the soil surface
so I said Jamie just mentioned you know
very effective to use a knife around
another sharp device if you have a soul
profile available and other option would
be to use a shovel and dig your own hole
to take compassion through through
through a field the other point to is
that Jamie pointed out sometimes you
might find answers layers in the soil
that they're not necessarily compaction
and may not really restrict your root
growth of your crops so another option
would be to use another sharp of device
near i have a justice general regular
screwdriver which is about 12 inches
long so you could potentially push this
into the field into the ground to try to
find out for compaction and roughly you
know we have compassion for about 9
inches in here or a denser layer which
is cost me look by that changing picture
of Jamie talked about one key thing i
want to mention is that when you're
using this type of device especially the
ones that I'm going to show you now like
this screwdriver or this other planet
trauma tur that do not have a gauge or
even this one with the gauge you want to
you find a place that is not compacted
to get a background information kind of
correct for that clay content in water
content difference that you might have
so you're really getting to the root of
the problem with with the soil
compaction so this would be an option
using a sharp object like a like a
screwdriver
here's another penetrometer that you go
with extension has been using for the
soul health assessment made by the
machine shop locally which is kind of
nice has a really nice beefy handled
kinda looks like a tile probe has the
the cone I following the specifications
from the american society of biological
and agricultural engineers which is a
35-32 excuse me 30 degree cone angle and
with a shoulder so with this one you
know be similar to a probe a regular one
so you push it into the ground and kind
of similarly you know you can have to
kind of really develop a feel for it so
you have to practice quite a bit to
figure it out but you know you can kind
of find the compaction depth with this
this one it's nice enough that it
actually has markings in it to help you
with the depth direction so this would
be another option
something like this can run you about a
hundred dollars or less you can have a
local machine shop buildings for you
this is another one that I've shown you
before commercially available has a nice
scale comes with two different tips also
with the graduations in the in the rod
this runs about three four hundred
dollars so very useful but you don't
need to go to this level to try to
assess compassion in your fields
something like this with practice can do
as good a job now if we take it to the
next level
this is one that I use a lot for
research is available commercially this
one is actually digital penetrometer
that has a digital display has the depth
sensor built in and has a low self in
here so as you're pushing it into the
ground it actually will tell me with
death every inch the pressure the psi
pounds per square inch and tells me that
that's down to 18 inches of them if you
like more information please contact
your local County Extension Office or
the website below