Minute floor

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The minute soil is arable soil (see agriculture ) with a very high clay content , which can only be worked on for a very short time and which often causes problems with cultivation.

Clay represents the finest possible texture in the soil. Clay particles mainly have fine pores that can hold a lot of water, but hardly release it again. For this reason, cultivated plants in minute soils can be under water stress despite visible soil moisture .

In addition to the cultural problems, difficulties in cultivation are in the foreground: clay makes soils three-dimensional, which poses challenges for cultivation and drivability. The water conditions are complicated: Wet clay soils are tough and cohesive and take a long time to dry out again. On the other hand, dried-out clay soils are rock-hard, so that precipitation is initially not absorbed but drains off. A minute floor cannot be worked on either when it is wet or dry:

Floors that are too wet are greasy and stick to equipment. When digging with a spade , the clods stick to the spade. Similar problems arise when plowing. The result is not the desired, crumbly clod that can be crushed and spread with a harrow . Rather, the result is a more or less continuous strand of clay. If it is too wet, the areas are also almost impassable, as the machines sink in and soil compaction occurs.

After longer periods of drought, the too dry soils are strongly consolidated and hardened. The drivability is not a problem under these conditions. However, processing is almost impossible because the plow hardly penetrates the ground and veers upwards. The floors would have to be broken apart with great effort, which would lead to long-term structural damage .

For agrotechnical cultivation, there must therefore be a very specific level of moisture that is neither too wet nor too dry. The time window between these two extremes is narrow and strongly dependent on the weather. It is often only a few days in the entire year and, under certain circumstances, only a few hours. This is where the name minute bottom comes from.

Clay-rich soils in Germany are the Pelosol , the Terra fusca or the Kleimarsch .

literature

  • Gerhard Schroeder: Agricultural hydraulic engineering . Springer, Berlin 2014 (1968), ISBN 978-3-642-95035-3 , p. 44 f.

See also