How to Loosen Hard Soils

Hard soil

If your land is tough and the crop is not good in your land, then you should test your land, which you will find out which alignments are higher and what is lower in your land. From which you can make a schedule for fertilizers in your land

Soil Treatment

Loosen hard soil

Main reason of hardness is presence of excessive amount of sodium. Sodium is monovalent atom having one positive charge, Na+, it attaches itself with negatively charged clay particle. In this way its charge is balanced and cannot attract another clay particle, due to which soil changes to very fine particles, causing fine structure. When dried these fine particles form very compact arrangement causing hardness of soil. Other reasons include geological aspects, high pH, less organic matter and soil compaction due to use of heavy machinery.
#Treatment ;
There are different ways to remove sodium from upper layer of soil and to make it porous and loose.

Plant treatment

1. Deep plough with chezel twice and then level land. Now fertigate calcium nitrate or calcium chloride 30 to 50 kg/acre. Keep standing water in this field for 3 to 4 days. Calcium nitrate and calcium chloride have readily available calcium which will effectively detach sidium from soil and sodium will leach down with water. Calcium is divalent atom Ca++, so it has more attraction for soil particles as compared to sodium. It will remove sodium and will take its place. Then due to divalent nature it will aggregate soil particles which will loosen soil and after one week of treatment soil structure will be much better. This is a quick way to reclaim soil.

2: Dig a hole on one side of affected acre upto level of sand of size 5x5 feet. Level your land, give 2 to 3 ploughing. Then flood it upto 6 inches, most of sodium will dissolve in water. Then after half hour remove this salty water out of field into hole. Repeat this process after 10 days. Take gypsum stones and place in front of tube well delivery. It will slowly add calcium which will further assist in reclaiming.

Sulphur

Along with above practices, always use acidic fertilizers, 20 kg sulfur in each crop, organic matter in form of compost, green manuring whenever possible, and chezel plough atleast once in a year will make your soil much more rich, loosen and well structured.