Friday, November 5, 2010

Soil preparation

Soil preparation started on Tuesday. The soil is a sandy-loam soil, with a suitability rating of 7/10 for vineyards. It has a 50% coarse laterite layer from 45cm - 90cm. The area is 4ha big and will be planted with Carignan.

Soil preparation starts off with soil sampling - chemically and physically. Then the soil needs to get "loosened". This is to break the compacted zones and is done with a big ripper. A normal tractor cant be used for this and we usually use a D9 or D8 Caterpillar bulldozer for this job.

The importance of soil preparation must never be under estimated. It is the one chance you have to give the vineyard a better root developing chance and to set your chemical imbalances right to a reasonable depth. Once the vineyard is planted it is very difficult to do adjustments deeper that 30cm.

In this case we use a D8R Caterpillar. For the technical people you can read the specifications on this dozer here.

I don't have much more to say on this topic now, but the pictures are pretty much self explanatory.







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