What do I need to fix my dirt?

[Bcamos]

Trying to get away with building a riding arena for cheap. We have pretty soft dirt, but it's also pretty compacted. I have a box blade and a chain drag. Neither really seem to rip up the dirt then leave it there (the drag doesn't do too bad, but the dirt is too compacted for it to really rip through it)

I was thinking of renting a soil pulverizer, or even a rotary tiller. Once the soild is completely broken up I can manage it with the drag. My problem is getting it to that manageable point.

While we're on the subject, what's the best route for getting the small rocks out?

 

[skeets]

Find a spike harrow and keep driving around and around, add weight if need be as far as rocks if they are big get the kids to pick them up, small one wont hurt your ponys any,just clean the hoofs out when your done and every time you run around it your gona find more rocks and more rocks, or if you can pick them up a landscape rack will help a bunch,,, just remember dont over think stuff keep it simple,,, Yeah I use to raise Arabs, now my horse if metal

 

[Bcamos]

Find a spike harrow and keep driving around and around, add weight if need be as far as rocks if they are big get the kids to pick them up, small one wont hurt your ponys any,just clean the hoofs out when your done and every time you run around it your gona find more rocks and more rocks, or if you can pick them up a landscape rack will help a bunch,,, just remember dont over think stuff keep it simple,,, Yeah I use to raise Arabs, now my horse if metal

Haha we have one Arab. Her lofty mind is enough to keep us entertained. Our Paint and QH are the super calm ones.

My chain drag is doing okay, just not cutting a few inches down like I'd like. I figured working all of this out is cheaper than getting a footing dropped.

 

[bxray]

Try your box blade with one or two of the ripper shanks only.

Remember to shorten the top link for max penatration.

The back of the box needs to be off the ground.

Once you get it broke up you can use the rest of them to break it up more.

Ray

 

[sheepfarmer]

Is this going to be an indoor or outside arena? Drainage? How much use will it get? Pack it into concrete or turn it into a swamp when it rains? The reason I ask is you might save yourself future grief if you figure out drainage now, and decide how to handle it before you plow it up, build fences etc. Some places the dirt turns into dangerously slippery when wet, and concrete when dry (mine), but crowning it and then a layer of washed sand with bark chips over that makes it useable most of the year.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

If the soil packs, there is nothing your going to do to keep it from repacking without adding something, like sand and a lot of it.
I have done a lot of arena work over the years, and if you have clay it's going to take some sand and working it in with a disk or a harrow to keep it from compacting real hard.

Just re read sheep farmers advice, Yea if you can get some wood chips that would help a lot too!

 

[vic gerbasi]

I use a king kutter from tsc behind my L3300 for both my 2 neighbours and my arena and sand corral

all works fine

 

[skeets]

Wolfman and Sheepfarmer both bring up very good points. Drainage is very important as well as the make up of the dirt. We had mostly yellow clay here and I cant even begin to guess how much sand and sawdust and chips I worked in over the years my girls rode.When it was dry and worked up not a problem when it rained like Sheepfarmer said ,was a mud hole and hard as a rock when it dried, and took forever to drain so it could be worked. A local saw mill gave me all the saw dust I could haul, except for when they were sawing cherry, something about the cherry thats not good for the critters. Everything else I used for bedding ad when it got bad after useing the apple picker and changing bedding. I started mixing it in the dirt as I worked it, and when I could get sand that worked in too. One thing I did to was trench around it and through it, with 4 inch drainage pipe, and back filled with gravel and landscaping cloth over it to keep the dirt out of the gravel. I went down about 18 inches and it seemed to help quite a bit. Then the girls grew up went to collage the Arabs went to good homes with little girls that loved them. And now the grass grows very nicely there

 

[sheepfarmer]

Skeets brings up 3 good points: use of landscape cloth to separate layers, I have it under a base layer of what we call road mix which is what we crowned it to get the water to run off all 4 sides. But depending on your land you can have a slight overall slope to get it to drain. If you have a layer of washed sand and a slope, that layer will carry the water off. But then the top layer of wood chips can only be dragged with a piece of chain link fence to level since you don't want to mix up the layers with that design. It is a lot of labor to get this design set up initially but it is good for about 10 years before you have to do much to it.

If you do an arena like Skeets did, with saw dust, besides cherry, avoid black walnut sawdust!

Finally since the kids do grow up, and if you'd like to turn the spot back to grass, don't be tempted to use the rubber tire crumbs as a concussion absorbing substance. Getting rid of it would be a nightmare.

 

[SDMauler]

I helped a neighbor rehab his horse training corral. It already had some sand in it, but it had been pounded down into the dirt underneath. Used the rototiller to fluff everything up, then had a load of sand put on it, spread it around, and after much use, fluffed it up again. I would think a layer of Geotex would cause problems for something as heavy as a horse, making the sand a bit slippery. If anything, I would excavate down, put a layer of geotex down then put in a 6 inch minimum lift of crushed rock (like you use as a compacted base under brick pavers), compact it well, then add a 6 inch lift of sand or sandy loam. If you have to fluff up the sand, just use a spike harrow drag so you don't tear up the base.