Frost depth

[wade]

Is it advantagous to have the frost go down deeper for better crop production the following year? Years?

[nicolaas]

Frost may help to break up any compaction or hard pan in your field, but it also can promote run off during spring melt. Our best crop in decades was when we got 2 ft of snow in late october before the frost and it never left. We ended up with close to 7 ft of snow, and there was no frost in the ground at all. There was very little spring runoff, and there was water lieing under the snow all winter. You could pound posts in February, and when we fed the cows you had to pack the snow down with a 4wheel drive tractor a few days in advance. That was the winter of '06/'07.