Until your PH is right, you are going to struggle. Get a soil test done and add bulk ag lime. Then plan on, based upon my experience, about a year for it to really start changing the PH on your soil.


This is what I have found works for me with harder clay. You need to subsoil it. I would add lime, then subsoil it, and then plant something like sunn hemp ahead of rain. Don't disk it, just subsoil it. Or sunn hemp and buckwheat. Then in the fall, bush hog it, disk it, and plant your fall crops. Go heavy on cereal grains, but also do radishes. In the spring, after turkey season, go back out, and broadcast sunn hemp again, and add clay peas, and then bush hog the field, and use the tall cereals as mulch. Go lighter on the sunn hemp this time. Then in the fall, broadcast cereals, brassica's or whatever you want to plant into the standing beans and leave it alone. Be sure to get some innoculent for the sunn hemp and peas. That helps too.

DIsking creates hardpan. On every field I had issues with, once I subsoiled the field, its output increased significantly. Most people don't realize your average deer club does the same thing. They go out, disk fields in the fall, plant the cheapest 3 or 4 way mix, and put out triple 13 at a couple bags per acre and call it good. If they plant in the spring, they go out and disk again, and then plant peas. In August, they come out and bush hog the peas, spray the field and let it sit for a couple weeks until club workdays, and plant ahead of rain, after they disk it again.

I have something in fields growing all the time the deer can eat. And disking kills earthworms. You want earthworms. If you see them, you are getting there.