Planting rates, dates, herbicide systems, insecticide systems, and fertility all have to be considered before the planter touches the soil. Below are a few guidelines. Subsoiling corn fields is a best management practice. This procedure allows the corn plant to mine greater amounts of both water and nutrients. Therefore, corn fields generally yield more if they are subsoiled.
Difficulty exist, however, in first subsoiling the fields, then bedding the ground.
In the spring, moist soils allow the implement to carve a channel through the compacted layer. To shatter the compacted layer, the subsoil must be dry, and this result is possible, usually, only in the fall. The subsoiled channel does not have to be directly below the middle of the bed to be effective, but a hipper-ripper is a tool of choice, another tool of choice would be a parabolic subsoiler that hips the ground in a row as it accomplishes its purpose. Another procedure is to disk the stubble, hip the beds, subsoil down the middle of the hipped beds, rebed, knockdown, and plant. The only difference in these two approaches really is an attempt to eliminate one disking, and in eliminating the rebedding trip.