BOGTROTTER - 9/13/2025 20:29

A NAT member who occasionally post here did rye at a bushel or so per acre, spread with a fertilizer spreader from TERRA (that ages it fairly well, about 25 to 30 years ago), the spreader was spaced to run in the row centers. The rye was spread a couple of weeks before beet harvest, the leaf drop plus the leaves beaten of prior to lifting covered the seed. They were religious about traffic management, insisting that trucks never crossed the field diagonally and had to stay in the row until the headlands which helped with compaction issues. The following spring I did field checks on 2 fields, the home farm was a heavier clay loam and the catch was thin and the height was modest. The other field was a sandy clay loan and had a far better catch and the rye was waist height when they sprayed it and no tilled corn into it. The field that had the better catch had a distinct pattern of medium height and then some what shorter rye with the taller rye in the former beet rows and the shorter rye in the row centers. The difference was enough to allow them to navigate and stay on the former beet rows. This was years before gps guidance. They did use markers because if you looked away from guidance to watch the planter then looked back, fining your tract was impossible. The experience was enough for them to continue with rye and to add tillage radish. The elder partner said the planter acted is it were following railroad tracts when it correctly matched the prior years beet rows. This revelation led them to strip till along with cover crops and they eventually evolved away from sugar beets entirely.