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How do you improve water infiltration on your farm, and why do you need to do so? That's what we're covering here in this episode of Demco's Built to Move series, simplifying agronomy
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to help you farm better. I'm with Jason DeCaeywer. He's a northwest Iowa farmer. He happens to be with Demco. He also is an agricultural consultant.
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We're standing here by my drainage ditch, and before I want water to get to that drainage ditch, I want it to be maximized in my soil
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profile all the way down to the tile line. Exactly. You're getting a lot of rain right now. I'm assuming it's going to turn off at some point.
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How can you hold that water in your soil for later season crop needs? So,
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how good is your porosity in the soil out there, right? And the compaction. Have you addressed the compaction issues?
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That's two places to start. Yeah. Porosity, compaction. You also said before we hit the record button, base saturation matters a lot, so we're going to get into that.
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So, in this field, I've got wheat out here and it's because we're going to do some crop rotation changes.
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The longer a living root is in the soil, the better the water infiltration. Hit on that.
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Definitely. So, living roots are just, they're digging down in the soil. That improves biology. It tends to not necessarily fix your
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base saturation, but it just all, it's kind of a systems approach when you slowly improve base saturation, get more calcium out there, per se.
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So lime, if I can improve my base saturation just by making sure my lime numbers and my pH is right.
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Well, not necessarily pH, because pH isn't always an indicator of what base saturation is doing, but
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calcium's a bigger particle. Magnesium's a smaller one. Do you want a lot of little particles compacting or plugging? Little particles pack up harder.
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Exactly. Okay. Calcium's a bigger particle, so it- The right calcium will help me with managing the compaction. Obviously, staying off of wet soil, avoiding compaction in general, and then
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keeping roots live in there. What else can I think about when I think about how to make water infiltration? Because I want that water come July, August, when it dries
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out. It's plenty wet right now in May. Yeah. I think some buffer strips also, as you have here. I'd slow that water down. In the event that you can't get it to go down, are
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you slowing it down from racing away? And then with grass strips, that's probably a good place to start as well. Right, and it keeps the water out in the field.
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I read something once about this amazing thing, like just some practices, like you've talked about, compaction management, residue
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management, having roots in there, base saturation, particle size, et cetera. You're talking about an inch of water lasts three weeks longer, and I'm going to
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need that- Correct ... come dry part of the year. And maybe even strip till, right? It slowly is going to change your soil structure with all those other things. So, do practices that tend to build soil
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structure long-term. I think the big one is we're going to see more regulation on how we utilize our water and how we do our farming, and I think the better you can do about getting
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that water to go down and stay where you want it... Mm-hmm, instead of letting it run off down the crick. Are you making the most of the water that comes on your farm?
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Because water infiltration, getting it down to the soil where it can help you all season long, it's a very important topic.
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Speaking of water, Jason, I think we're going to be getting some rain here. It's on the way.
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It's been a wet spring. Till next time. 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:01.540
