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Blasting Or Tiling

Categories: Soils, Fertilizers and Irrigation

In planting trees where hardpan is four feet from the surface is it

necessary to blast the hardpan, or is there no benefit derived by the

blasting?



If there should be a good available soil under a shallow layer of

hardpan, which you say is four feet from the surface, it might be of

considerable advantage to bore into the hardpan and explode a dynamite

cartridge in it. But if your good soil is really only
our feet deep and

hardpan continuous below, the blast might cause fissures which would

prevent standing water in the upper stratum. If you are sure of four

feet of good soil above the hardpan you will have no difficulty in

growing good trees, if you get the moisture just right and the hardpan

slopes in such a way that surplus moisture will move away. If, however,

you have hardpan at different depths on the tract, so that it may really

make basins which will hold water, you are likely to have trouble from

accumulations of water which will not only prevent the roots extending

to the full depths of the soil, but will also cause some trees to die.

Such a danger could be removed by draining the soil to a depth of three

and a half or four feet with tile, in order to prevent accumulations at

any point. This would be expensive perhaps, but you would be sure that

you had rendered your four feet of soil safe and available. If you trust

to blasting you will have to wait several years for the trees to tell

you whether you helped them or not.



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