Seems like a good idea for crusting soils.

I don't have much experience with crusting in heavy soils, but have worked a lot with the "non-wetting" florida sands. A bizarre situations where once the surface gets quite dry water flows right off, even though once the surface gets wet water goes through the excessively drained sand like a bullet headed for the limestone bedrock.

The solution to surface crust is heavy mulching. These 'breathe holes' sound an awful lot like aeration tubes. The research on aeration tubes don't reveal any benefit for oxygen exchange.

Here is a link that might be useful: Root snorkels (PDF)

I appreciate your tips and trying to help others.. Let's briefly look at what you posted:

"Structural soil crusts are relatively thin, dense, somewhat continuous layers of non-aggregated soil particles on the surface of tilled and exposed soils"

Tilled and EXPOSED soils... You can poke all the holes you want, you have to fix the root cause of the problem, not a symptom.. Fix the soil structure and youwill not have soil "crusts", nor other problems...

-never leave soil bare
-mulch
-grow a cover crop
-apply compost
-NEVER LEAVE Soil bare for periods of time

I can only imagine spending my day kneeling in the garden, with chopsticks, not eating sushi... Man that would suck!

This post was edited by Raw_Nature on Fri, Apr 19, 13 at 12:31

Seems like aeration is still a good practice, I general.

A couple of issue are getting intertwined here - one is soil crusting, the other is soil hydrophobicity or water repellency. The two often are related, but not necessarily.

Water repellent soil is typically the result of a hydrophobic organic coating on surface soil particles. It is common on charred soils following a forest fire. But it can also arise from plants in the surrounding area that exude hydrophobic substances. Hydrophobic soils can also arise from many common gardening practices that increase organic matter in the surface layer, including the use of "green" mulches. It can arise from a number of microorganisms living is the surface region. Hydrophobicity can extend well more than an inch into heavily affected soils, especially those with large soil particles.

Soils that have a hydrophobic surface are also frequently prone to crusting. But there are other mechanisms that can lead to crusting without the benefit of a hydrophobic organic coating on the surface particles. Typically soils that are prone to crusting after drying begin with very fine soil particles that pack well together.

I think youwould probably use a spading fork instead of chopsticks Raw. I have definitely done that in order to get water to absorb into hydrophobic soil. But I only doit initially and then mulch and keep watered. I have hydrophobic soil issues, but my solution has been to build the bed in such a way as tobe able to flood it.

"How to poke breathe holes?
1) With a stick small in diameter such as chopstick."

They say a spading fork is to big.. Go order take out, get on your knees, start poking holes with your chopsticks.. Throw out your spading fork! You might want to use the chopsticks after your done eating, of course..

Here's what I did for a large portion of my clay loam garden soil:

I added 4 inches of local peat moss and 3 inches of coarse/medium local sand. Then this is forked, shoveled, and tilled into most of the original good topsoil. In one day the tilth never crusts but absorbs water like a sponge. As the water percolates on downward, air follows it [nature abhors a vacuum].

oh it does say chopstick, um no thanks.

Wayne,

A lot of people say you need at least 60-70% sand by volume unless you would run into worse problems in the long run.. Maybe your part loam helped out.. I think adding sand to pure clay is not a wise idea..

On another note, I don't care how good your tilth and fertile is.. If you leave any soil bare, baking in the sun, it will crust.. The secret is never having your soil bare for periods of time, mulching,growing cover crops, and improving soil structure in general,etc...

Joe

I guess you forgot nature abhors a vacuum: if a soil is bare for long enough, things grow and then it's no longer bare. If it isn't mid-winter in the temperate latitudes, it will soon be covered with weeds.

Joe, It does not crust. ...not even close. I know what crust is.

Pnbrown:

Alot of gardeners don't mulch, they just pull weeds, leading to bare soil, and poor structure, leading to soil crusts,etc. Ceth is not the only person with soil crusts, it's anyone who doesn't mulch and pulls weeds, in general..

Wayne,

You don't leave your soil bare do you?

The whole point I'm trying to make is:

Never leave soil bare for long periods
Mulch
Grow a green manure/covercrop
Take care of your soil

The simplest solution to soil crusting is to add organic matter to the soil. It appears from the picture that that soil is severely depleted of organic matter. Soils crust in an effort to conserve soil moisture.

Joe, do you have any clue how patronizing your simplistic lectures are? I'm guessing not, due to what I suspect is very short experience in working with food crops. You might bear in mind that while some newbies pass through this forum, the majority of participants are very experienced.

Regarding this OP, for example: it's not about mulch or cover plants vs bare soil. It's about the reality that soil types vary extremely. Some types easily crust while others don't (bare or not); some soils can be non-wetting. What you specifically could take away from this thread is not that others don't understand simple things like mulch but rather that perhaps you have little awareness of soil variation.

"The simplest solution to soil crusting is to add organic matter to the soil."

In even my limited experience I have seen soils with very high organic matter content "crust" on drying. I've also experienced it with hardwood mulch (high organic) when it dries on the surface. In my observations, on bare soil surfaces the greater effect appears to be variation in soil particle sizes, or distribution of soil particle sizes. A greater diversity or mix of varied particle sizes from very small to large in the surface layer seems to have the greatest effect on preventing crusting, while a narrow mix or distribution of particle size appears to lead to greater packing and crusting. Depending on the base soil characteristics a good way to get a broad mix of particle sizes is by adding a coarse organic matter (coarse compost, peat moss, etc.) to an otherwise fine particle soil. It can also be accomplished by adding comparatively large particle inorganic substances, such as vermiculite.

Do you have any clue the negativity you bring? Very short experience working with food crops? Your assumptions wrong, I have experience with several different types of crops, food is just one aspect.. It seems like you carry this preconceived notion on your shoulder or something.. You just want to believe your intelligence and experience speaks through your elequently written responses, and that's not always true.. We all know soil types come in all colors, sizes, etc.. You defensively stated that in every post.. It gets pretty old, kinda like the new kid on the block(me) giving advice, when you'd rather chime in..

I don't care your soil type, if you leave it bare, and don't take care of it, it's not going to be in good growing condition.. Call it crusts, call it what you want.. Your not going to tell me just because you have good soil initially, that your going to abuse it and beat it to hell.. Most all soils benefit from mulching, cover crops/green manures, organic matter..

I think what we could take away from this thread is, it's a wise idea to take care of your soil, whether you have sand or clay. It's not that people dont understand mulch, they merely overlook the simplicity of it all..

Joe, Sometimes the soil needs warming and drying some...no kidding. After about 5 or 6 inches of rain in the Midwest these last few days, mulch covering things might be too much of a good thing....for now.

TXEB was right about having a variance in partical size. If you have too much [even] fine sand, it can pack. If you have only fine clay with just a bit of fine silt, you will have crusting if the soil dries. For myself, I have a variance in sand sizes, silt, clay, peat, and other organics like rotted compost and manure. It just doesn't crust.

It's one thing raking the mulch off to let the ground warm for the warm crops, it's another thing not mulching at all. A lot of mulch displaces water when need be and replaces it when need be. Thus, preventing both over, and under watering..

As previously mentioned, the kind of mulch you use is based on your soil.. I use fluffy rye straw, some soils need thick leaves, where leaves in other soil would deprive oxygen... Diiferent situations call for different measures, Pnbrown would be the first to tell you that.. But, he doesn't think my little,unexperienced brain knows that much.

And then there is the issue of direct seeding where the soil needs to be bare, often for several weeks.

Soil is not simple. Plants are not simple. Relationships between those and fungi, bacteria and countless small animals living in the system are not simple.

Thinking that all problems can be solved with simplistic rules like never disturb the soil or never let soil be bare is not useful thinking (btw, I have not intended to criticize you personally - I am sometimes describing your statements as this or that; I'd appreciate the same courtesy in return).

As an example: someone wants to plants some seeds. perhaps one has a permanent bed, where the soil is in fact most of the time covered with plants, or dead plant material. So one pulls back the mulch or pulls out the cover plants, and sows seeds. Now in the case of small seeds, one cannot cover up with much or the tiny seedlings will have trouble getting through, plus, as has been mentioned many times, one often needs the soil to warm by full exposure to sun. So, if one has a soil type prone to crusting, that can be a problem for a while until the plants get up to a size to be mulched or cultivated. likewise a non-wetting soil can be a problem in the same context while trying to keep the sown area damp to sprout seed.

So where does reflexive thinking about always keeping the soil covered fit into this kind of reality?

maybe Ceth will return and save his thread from hijack :)

Ceth, stab us with some chopsticks man, forget the soil, just save this thread! ; )

I used to often "cover" tiny seeds with just a layer of moist peat moss and firm that down and keep moist. It works very well and cannot crust. I sent this advice to Robert Rodale and "Organic Gardening Magazine". I can just see it now. It likely hit a eco nerve and mental block about how evil peat moss is. Peat moss it growing perhaps "hundreds" of time faster than we use it. Go figure.

I am sorry that this thread is going toward a direction that is not intended. It is almost funny to see how people would defend themselves over any gardening issues, which is a good thing actually. It is nice to see serious people giving their best to this thread. Thank you. You guys really know your stuff.

First of all, I'd have to agree with pnbrown that, while being a good gardening practice, mulching is not for everyone in every situation. What I just said might sound redundant but if you try it for a few months in the place where I live like I did, you will come to the same conclusion that mulching is good for soil but does not solve my sandy crust problem at all.

Soil crusting is a complicated problem(at least to me) . The crust on clay soil has very different behavior from a sandy soil crust. Clay particle is highly water absorbing and the crust on it just gives it more surface area for it to absorb and retain more water. If you mulch in this situation, the mulch will effectively reduce water evaporation from the clay crust, thus saving you a lot of watering in certain time of year. This is exactly what mulching is for imo: to preserve and reduce water evaporation in soil.

Sandy soil is a water repelling in nature. Anything you put to cover it will add to the difficulty of it absorbing water. It is not a problem with water retention now. It is the problem of getting water INTO the soil. Mulch does nothing to help with this, and somehow makes it harder to water the plant. Even if you manage to soak a few inches on top the rest of the bed is still dry as hell. This leaves me no choice but to water my beds longer than usual during dry seasons which waste water.

The breathe holes really stop surface runoff. The water disappear so quickly and not running down beside the beds like before. It is tedious job poking them every once in a while but at least they work. And if you apply fertilizer before watering the breathe holes it is even better as the fertilizer can go deeper and faster.

Raw stated "....it's anyone who doesn't mulch and pulls weeds, in general... "(who gets a soil crusting problem.) Just another quick two pennorth. It really is the case that different situations need different strategies, just as Raw later said. Mulching is great a lot of the time in a lot of situations. But in some it is not. Maybe Raw does not live in a region with heavy clay soil, ample rainfall and a massive slug and snail population. I can go into my garden and turn over a single leaf lying on the soil. Under it will be clustered three or four slugs... that is a SINGLE leaf. If I mulched my vegetables when they were small I would never harvest a single thing, except fresh escargots. I incorporate a huge amount of muck and compost into the soil and I mulch ornamentals and shrubs. But mulching just doesn't work in my vegetable garden. I keep the earth bare and I pull weeds, not that there are many after years of cultivation. And my soil does not crust.

If you have sandy hydrophobic soil, it sounds like you have something similar to what I have. Mine is very low in OM, about 2%, naturally amd 86% fine sand. Increasing that helps considerably. (I think what is going on in my soil is that there isn't enough OM to bond with the clay so it bonds with the fine sand and forms essentially mortar. standard oversimplification disclaimer) Also, if you have sandy soil that drains quickly you really don't need big mounds that the water can runoff. This is why I prefer a floodable veg bed in sandy soil. The other issue you describe, simply wetting the very top, sounds like a irrigation practice problem. Sandy soil like that should be watered lightly and frequently because the water passes through the root horizon so quickly.

Also, don't let it get bone dry which unfortunately happens quickly in sand.

out of curiosity ceth, what are your soil structure percentages?

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, Ceth_K, for sharing this useful info. It works wonder in my rock-hard limestone clay. I wasted water in the past, since it flooded over my roses, rather than sinking in.

Yesterday I poked holes around my roses with a bamboo stick. It broke ! So I use metallic skewers for grilling and pokes holes around my roses. Every drop of water went in, instead of flooding to the side.

We get the greenest lawn by aerating yearly with a machine that pulled out plugs from our heavy clay. The neighbor only fertilizes, and his lawn can't compare.

Poking holes into the soil allows oxygen and nitrogen to penetrate, so roots can breathe, and plants green up fast. It saves water with no run off.

I'm a little late to the party but just wanted to confirm what wayne has said.

Large amounts of peat moss and compost mixed into my clay soil creates a surface that doesn't crust. I also do not mulch, as I've learned from experience in my area that mulching creates an explosion in the slug and pill bug population. I leave the soil bare but still no crusting.

I think we are all talking from experience with our own soil types/weather/environment.

Strawberryhill you are welcome, glad you found this useful. But this is not a long term thing. To solve all the crusting and water repelling problem once and for all, you will have to mix a lot of compost and manure into your soil for at least a few years. And summer is near, so don't forget to do the one most important thing in summer(and in summer only)-------mulch.

Mulching is, imo, good for soil only in summer and not good(sometimes very bad) in any other seasons.