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Asked by parkerartist ·March 11, 2022 ·3.66k readers

Soil repair

I just bought a traditional farmed piece of land I plan to KNF on. We did a perc test and 1/2 an inch of water drained in 18 hour where it should have been 1 - 3 inches an hour. The soil is very compacted and is considered "massive" at 4" to 14" than clay kicks in. I've seen a lot about applying a soil drench to repair soil at 1000 liters per 1/4 acre. My concern is most of it will just run off the top. Am I over thinking thing and just need to trust the process or is there something I need to do to prepare the soil for the drench? Thanks in advance for any advice offered.

Top answer

From the KNF library

From the KNF library Drafted by Claude from Office Hours and the books · Sep 2026 · 6 sources

Drake's manual says the drench is meant to stay shallow. The water is applied so it saturates only the top 1/2-1 inch of soil (Pure KNF Manual, p. 14). The microbes then dive down and colonize the land (Pure KNF Manual, p. 14). The aim is a wet surface, not a soaked profile (Pure KNF Manual, p. 14).

For compaction, the library points to diluted seawater. Drake's notes list it for exhausted land, to relieve compaction (Cho's Solutions, p. 15). Mix it 1:30 with fresh water, or 1 gram of sea salt per liter (Cho's Solutions, p. 15). It flocculates the soil, adding airspace, water holding capacity and homes for microbes (Cho's Solutions, p. 15). The manual says drainage then takes place (Pure KNF Manual, p. 54).

Expect to repeat. Drake drenches his worst field until the ground recovers, and needs less over time (Office Hours Ep. 30, 47:45).

On tillage, the library leans the other way from the tilling advice above. Drake says tillage dries out and kills the soil microbiome (Office Hours Ep. 88, 21:31). The KNF guide says to cut weeds just above the surface (KNF Demystified, p. 12). It says to seed cover crops such as clover before removing weeds (KNF Demystified, p. 12). It says roots left in place let microbes work deeper than a plow or shovel could reach (KNF Demystified, p. 12).

The library says nothing about perc tests, slope or runoff.

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