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.