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EC SD | It depends on the soil types and slopes of your field. I took a few hundred acres of CRP out about 10 years ago and it was a lot of work!! It had a few thousand small cedar trees (up to 5 feet tall), tons of gopher/badger/coyote holes and dirt mounds, tons of weeds, etc.
Step one was a skidloader with a tree puller attachment to yank out all of the trees with roots attached. Then pick up all of those trees and move them out of the field. Step two was to bale the best parts where the CRP grass was shoulder high and get those bales out of the field. Then moldboard plow about 8 to 10 inches deep to completely bury the plants and weed seed in the fall. Then in the spring, about 3 light disk passes at a 45 deg angle to the plowing, to level it out enough for fertilizer spreading. The first pass was slow and a rough ride of course, but it got smoother with each pass. Finally another light disk pass at a shallow angle to incorporate the fertilizer and allow planting corn at about 3 to 3.5 mph.
The first year corn yield was excellent with this approach. In prior years, we tried chem burndown in the fall and spring and then no-til corn, but the yield was a disaster on that method. I think the no-til could have worked if we had strip tilled in fertilizer bands, but we didn't have equipment to do that. | |
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Breaking Crp ground .
