Plowing & Fitting Your Fields

If you are planting an orchard in rows, this is your opportunity to get it right. The rows that you drive over now will be the rows you drive over week after week, year after year. Those annoying rocks and uneven spots will come to haunt you.

Follow these steps for a happy tractor-driving life:

1. Mow your field tight. Make it a scalping low mow.
2. Lime your field. Don't cheap out. Put out the full recommended amount per acre.
3. Plow your field with a moldboard plow. Be sure to plow when the soil is friable. This is soil that is neither too wet nor too dry. It can be formed into a ball, but it will fall apart when poked.
4. Smooth your field with a disc or cultipacker. This will break up the clods. 
5. Pick the rocks. This is work, but it will save you from even more work in the future.
6. Subsoil the rows that you plan to plant. Just a simple single shank subsoiler will work. This will break up any fragipan (blocks of dense soil that roots cannot penetrate) that exist.
7. Plant your trees.
8. Seed your fescue.
9. Sit on your porch and have a nice glass of lemonade. You deserve it.