Soil Drainage

Improving subsurface drainage can increase yields in most crops more than any other management practice. Installing drainage tiles can give an immediate payback and the life of the tiles are usually 25 plus years. PRO CAL 40 gypsum applications are essential for maximum performance of drainage tiles. Gypsum helps improve infiltration and internal drainage increasing the speed at which a field will drain allowing oxygen to re-enter the soil quickly. Gypsum also helps aggregate the soil particles improving the quality of the water leaving the tile lines and will also lessen the sedimentation in the tile lines.

We have even applied gypsum to fields that were previously tiled, but hadn’t been performing. After the gypsum application the tiles started running once again. It has the same affect as releasing a thumb from the top of a straw allowing the water to be released from the straw.

There are some soils that have been deemed unfit for drainage tile because they are too tight of clay soils. With the application of gypsum to these soils drainage tiles did perform on these soils quite well and changed the chemistry of the soil allowing for greater crop production and even better drainage over time.