I have a couple 2nd year food plots in Marengo County and I am having a hard time processing the heavy soil to make a good seedbed. A disk just doesn�t want to bust the big clay clots up. I cleared the land and planted these plots last year and the results were not very good. I will add that I did follow my soil analysis to the T so I feel like the poor seedbed was the issue. Anybody have any advice/experience with this? I will try to attach some pictures in my next post.

Pictures

https://imgur.com/gallery/k5Dac

I would plant a small seed heavy regiment for a couple of years such as cereal grain, oats, clover, and let the roots of the plants break up the ground for you. Most cereal grain just needs soil contact.

Use a tiller.

I would disc it again with a drag on the disc. My land does the same thing but after I disc it a couple times with a drag it slicks out.

That really doesn't look bad. I have few spots with sure enough red clay that is near impossible to break up. 95% of the time it's either too dry and hard as concrete or too wet to til

Need lots of organic matter. Daikons and elbon rye would be what I planted. Milo in the spring.
if you really want to get into it, gypsum and sand are what Ive seen recommended for heavy clay soils to help break em up.

Subsoil.

^^^This. And maybe hire someone with a turning plow in the off season. Maybe that'll help?

Elbon rye and drag it in. Broadcast Crimson clover after that.

I agree with the organic matter but I wouldn't add sand.

Disc it some more at a higher speed. With more time on the tractor you can get it looking better even with a disc. Was the soil very moist? Looks like it has adequate organic matter, it's just that thick black belt soil.

You can also take the angle out of the disc to get more cutting action and less turning of the soil which would cut those clods up better. May be a good idea for a final pass or two.

^^^^^^

Have you added any lime yet?

All of this will give you what you are looking for. Just don't do it when it is wet. I could bottom plow all day if I could.

He's in Prairie dirt. there's about a 30 minute window where this would work. Before that it will gum up around the tines and make a huge roller out of the drum (I can show you some pics of disc's we used this weekend trying to cover.

After that, it will be dry and hard and will just sit on top and scratch up the top 2-4". That 30 minute period it will work like sand until you hit a wet spot. Then disaster. It is HELL to get out between the blades of a disc and I can only imagine the horror of trying to get up under a tiller and scrape, dig, or blast it out from under there.

The best thing you can do there is has been described. Get something going like cereal rye, wheat, oats etc. It doesn't have to get smooth like sand to work. seed to soil contact is the key. A cultipacker works like a dream when conditions are right. Ran one on our place this weekend on soil just like that. Some places the cultipacker built up but it wasn't where it wouldn't work.