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Wallis, TX | notill89 - 8/7/2011 06:51
Tim
It is not that notill will not work everywhere, I believe it is more like notill will not fit everyone's system. It is very difficult to notill a monoculture crop. After a couple years the lack of diversity will begin to present all kinds of problem for notill. Tillage can sometimes temporarily help these problems but it is not a long term fix.
I believe that if you have a diverse enough crop rotation, there is no where in the world that notill will not work.
OK here are the 'ground rules'. Our soils are heavy, some as much as 80% montmorillonite (sp) clay. We must plant on raised beds for drainage and to get to moisture for planting if we need to harrow off dry soil. The crop choices are cotton, corn and possibly milo. Beans burn up too often and wheat tends to get wet feet. Our fields are FLAT, some having less than 1' slope per mile. Tile won't work, soil too heavy and no fall for it to drain to. We often have to harvest in the mud or at least when the ground is moist and we will cut ruts, sometimes 3" other times 2'.
If the ground doesn't freeze, it won't loosen up. It's hard to get a stand if the soil is so hard the planter won't go in the ground. If you do get it up the roots can't go down and it burns up. Round up won't kill all weeds and cultivation is tillage. Keeping the ground clean between crops is expensive. The trash can keep it wet until it gets too hard to plant, and if you plant it wet it will get hard and the plants can't push up.
I took one field that had varying soil types and drainage from poor to good. I tried, and I tried and I tried some more to get notill to work. After 5 or 6 years, declining yields and crops that were so bad that crop insurance company wanted to know why I was collecting insurance when everyone else in the area had good crops so I worked the field. It now yields at or above others in the area. In fact, this year, even with the worst drought in history, I will probably be above my APH.
Believe me if I thought there was a way for notill to work I'd be doing it. I'm way to lazy to do all this field work! LOL As for tillage being a temporary fix, well we have been farming here since the late 1800's and our yields are still going up.
About the closest we can come true notill is stale seedbed. That is what we are doing now for the most part. We work it in the fall when it is dry and try to 'notill' in the spring without any more tillage. | |
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The Biology of Soil Compaction
