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Help with a troublesome farm...
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17821x
Posted 11/11/2012 19:26 (#2691579 - in reply to #2691326)
Subject: RE: Help with a troublesome farm...


NE Iowa
90% of what I farm is Fayette silt / clay loam. C and D slopes are the "good laying" fields for me and we've got a bunch of E and F slopes also. I personally would hate to see you pull the chisel through 10 years of no-till fields. About 5 years ago I pulled a "no-till" or in-line ripper through some of my fields that I thought were compacted. I went about 14" deep and it lifted the entire surface up between the shanks and let it back down and was able to plant into it with no further tillage. Don't think it really helped yields any and definitely caused some additional erosion. Probably won't ever do it again. I'm trying to use winter rye cover crops to help with compaction and prevent erosion. I would get some tissue samples next year. I've found zinc and boron deficiencies with those. I've also used end of year stalk tests to determine that I need to use more N than what others with different soils do. It seams like the higher the Mg base sturation of the soil the more N you need to use. Since corn needs a fair amount of S anymore I'd onsider using gypsum as your source of S. Maybe 500# per acre or so. On some of my worst fields that suffered the most erosion decades ago I'm experimenting with continuous no-till corn. Figure that nothing will rebuild the organic matter better then the high residue of corn every year. With the worst drought in 24 years this year for us these fields got hit hard but I'm not going to give up on it yet. I think I also need to build my K levels from their current "optimum" to the "high" category and I think that may help get me the next yield bump.

Edited by 17821x 11/11/2012 19:39
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