Spreading clay on non wetting sand.

[RocksnRoses]

In South Australia and southern Wesern Australia, a percentage of farming land consists of non wetting sand. This sand has very little goodness, repels water and drifts extensively in our hot dry climate with frequent strong winds. In most cases, there is good clay underneath this sand, varying in depth from three or four inches, to three or four feet, or even more. It has been found over the years, that by combining this clay with the sand, the sand takes the water in, becomes much more productive and most of all, stops it from drifting. Several methods are used to achieve this.
If the clay is reasonably shallow, a delver is used, although this one can go quite deep.
http://www.savannahglobal.com/cgiscripts/sfeframes.pl?display=h11462

Other methods used are normal elevating scrapers and especially constructed scrapers that are much wider and shallower so that they can cover the country quicker and are pulled with agricultural tractors.

Another method is by using a machine called a Claymate which was manufactured here, but has since gone out of production. It operates like a small scraper, pulled with an agricultural tractor, but instead of an elevator, a rotating drum with teeth on it is mounted just above the blade, spinning fairly fast and it chops and throws the clay in to an enclosed hopper, which holds between eight and twelve tonnes, depending on the size of the machine. When the hopper is full, the machine is taken to the area to be spread, the hopper is raised hydraulically and the chopped clay slides out on to two heavy duty spinners, similar to a fertiliser spreader and is spread on to the sand. The only drawback with this machine is, that the clay has to be dry, which makes it very much a summer operation.
Our part in this, is that we have to open up clay pits, by pushing the sand off an area approximately 60 metres x 40 metres, down to the clay, so that they can rip and load the clay. When they have finished, the sand has to be put back and clayed as well, as these pits are dug in the farmers paddocks, close to the area to be spread. We open and close quite a few of these pits every year, between January and April.
Here are some pics of pushing the sand off the clay and one of the farmer's Challenger and Claymate that we work for. The track tractors work the best in the soft boggy sand.

 

[RocksnRoses]

These pics are of the Claymate, but unfortunately you can't see the rotor above the cutting edge. The machine has it's own hydraulic pump which is driven from the PTO.

 

[RocksnRoses]

Here you can see the machine loading and spreading the clay and then we are reinstating the clay pit.

Rn'R.

 

[Squizzy246B]

This sand has very little goodness, repels water and drifts extensively in our hot dry climate with frequent strong winds.

I like the way you put its so.....eloquently:cool2

 

[RocksnRoses]

I like the way you put its so.....eloquently:cool2

Thank you.

Rn'R.

 

[Squizzy246B]

Thank you.

Rn'R.

I may not have really been a compliment since you could be qualifying for the HEF under statement of the year award..

My old man tells the story of how Grandpa and him drove down to Esperance one friday from Salmon Gums. Coming back on Monday there was a 20ft sandune over the road. Grandpa worked for the Group settlement scheme and pegged out the selections in a lot of that southern country...god forsaken country then...and its worse now.

Good pics by the way. You just got to love those Challengers after trying to drive wheeled stuff in that sand.

 

[RocksnRoses]

A chap from here took land up in Esperence and we were over there in the early seventies having a look around. It was just wall to wall sand. One of my mates with us, would go and help him after our harvest here and his job was disc ploughing thousands of acres in January and February. When we were there in March, they were harvesting sub clover, which meant that they had to harrow the sand to bring the clover up. They must have had some huge sand storms. Here is a couple of pics from there.

Rn'R.

 

[RTonkin]

Hey RocksnRoses, those are some really good photos showing clay spreading operations. I work in soils and land management, would you allow me to use some of those photos to show farmers what a Claymate does? Email me off-list if you like: bec_tonkin (at) yahoo (dot) com (dot) au.
Thanks, Rebecca

 

[RocksnRoses]

Thanks Rebecca, there is no problem with using the photos, I have sent you an email.

RnR.

 

[stumpjumper83]

Enlighten me, for I have no experience in australian matters, but wouldnt deep tillage tools be able to mix the soils? Or a road reclaimer rather than opening and closing these clay pits and stuff?

 

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . . stumpjumper83. As an Aussie I have no knowlege of this style of land treatment either. It is a regional thing but applies to many thousands of acres of country.

I suspect that deep tillage would be more expensive given the horse power required to work those heavy clays.

I too await RocksnRoses reply if he sees this.

Cheers.

PS RandR could you repost that link to the "delver" mate? The one supplied doesn't seem to work on my 'puter.

 

[RocksnRoses]

Stump, deep tillage tools are used in certain circumstances, if the clay is not very far below the surface, they have a tool called a clay delver, which has shanks that are designed to slide the clay to the surface, where it can be mixed with the non wetting sand. Once the sand is over a couple of feet deep, it becomes much harder to bring the quantity of clay needed, to the surface to blend with the sand. One downside with the delver, is that it leaves the paddocks very rough and it takes a lot of work to smooth them out. Also in our area, there can be quite a lot of limestone in the non wetting sand area and the delver brings up a mass of rock.

Here is a clip of a delver working, you can see there, the sand is not very deep.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS5sGxSWTIM

Scrub, the Savannah link doesn't seem to exist anymore, but they had a delver similar to the one in the video.
I doubt that delving would cost any more than clay spreading, because there is a lot of work in that too.

Scrapers of various designs are used in clay spreading as well, mostly tractor pulled ones, from smaller elevating scrapers, to specially built wide ones to cover the country quicker.

As clay spreading became more popular, a company designed and built the Claymate, which is pictured in previous posts. It works very well and gives a very even controlled spread, as well as chopping the clay into small flakes, which makes it much easier to incorporate into the non wetting sand.

More recently, to help incorporate the clay into the sand quicker, after either spreading, or delving, a machine called a spader is used. It works similar to a rotary hoe, but has small spades instead of cutters, that mix the clay with the sand.
Here is a clip of a spader incorporating the clay into the sand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2qGtGhr5Y4

In our area, the non wetting sand runs in ridges and in nearly every case, there is good clay underneath the sand at varying depths. This where we are employed to remove the sand, so that the contractor or farmer can go straight into the clay and spread the sand area, keeping travelling to a minimum. Once they have finished spreading, we backfill the area with the sand, they then spread clay over that and when it is all finished, the farmer is left with a shallow depression in his paddock, not much more than a foot deep.

Thousands of acres of non wetting sand in South Australia have have been spread with clay, using the various methods, turning unproductive sand that drifts with every wind, into productive land.

RnR.

 

[RTonkin]

Thanks RnR, much appreciated. That's a great summary of ways to add clay to sands too. If folks are interested, there's a case study book with plenty of information on ways to add clay to unproductive sands (and the pros and cons) just been put out by GRDC: http://www.grdc.com.au/director/eve...C&article_id=385A09F6DF78C2B20D5B4087261EB11D
(or http://************/7xw4pce)
Cheers,
Rebecca