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West Salem, Illinois | As the tittle states and the handle applies I do not row crop farm but I spend my day job around primarily row crop farmers and have a question.
Here is the scenario: last fall you planted cover crops of wheat and rye mixed, so this spring you have a strip till rig come in and put down some fertilizer and all of the magic that you need for a bumper corn crop. Now the rye and wheat is still going thru all of this so than you pull in and plant your corn in the open dried out strips. By the way my little slice of the Earth is very heavy clay soils, most of it has a roll too it, organic matter is virtually non-exsistant as is top soil were talking 1/2" to an inch. Conservative corn average is in the 130 to 150 bushel range, but there have been years and coffe shop talk of 200 bushel corn but I would say they are defiently not the norm! It is also not my intention to continue to let the rye and wheat grow but to kill it off at a latter date. I was thinking that if a person could get the corn to say 3 to 5 inches that a person could than kill it off and apply gas shortly after.
So here is my question's: Would a strip till rig even do this? Could it pull into this heavy of cover and actually do what they are designed to do and make a nice bed to plant into? Second, by not killing off the whole field and just turning under the strips would this cause a problem for the corn growing in the strips? Could a person band on chemical and have the strip till rig incorporate it to help with the pressure?
The reason I ask these questions is like I said we do have slight rolls to fairly rolling terrain, we have such a small amount of top soil that I would like it to stay put. I have not been actively involved in row crops since my Grandpa quit farming in 1999 and rented the ground out, but I do know that he did not have much luck with no-till corn and was just thinking this might be a suitable means of combining the "best" of both worlds. | |
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Don't flame me to bad just a cover crop/planting question
