| jd 9760 - 6/27/2012 18:41 Here I 've got notill and conventional till beans after corn. In every case the tilled ground looks better. You would think the notill ground would have held moisture better, and it probably did, But the trick here was getting the stuff up as quick as possible. The worked ground came up much faster and more even than the notill. I have stalk field that I ripped the end rows on and notilled the rest. The end rows are 6" taller, I have a better stand, and they look healthier. I'm not against notill I mean if it works it works but this year our worked ground looks better. No rain forcasted for the next week and 100 tomorrow so I'm thinking it isn't going to matter in the end. Local EMA says its been the driest year on record for us with more dry to come. I can believe it. Lots of that in KS this year. Most of the reasons have to do with the details of planting, particularly sidewall breakage, where no rainfall occurred for 40 - 50 days after planting. Huge differences. Even things as seemingly miniscule as 0.25" difference in the depth setting on a single row of a planter. But mostly it came down to how much breakage of the sidewall was attained -- see my comments in a different thread on that. But in these comparisons of multi-yr tillage vs no-till, there's another detail that we forget -- nutrient availability! Not only is no-till slower to warm, etc., but it often is more leached of nutrients. The reason is that people keep the same rotation, but eliminate tillage. Often there's more water percolating thru the soil profile with NT, so more K and other cations are leached out of the profile. For the Corn Belt, no-till goes with cover crops like a hand in a glove. With no-till, far less water is wasted thru evaporation (and runoff). Most of this leaches nutrients out of the profile, unless you change the crop rotations to extract more water. -- btw, I have yet to hear of anyone's no-till alfalfa not growing properly ;-) |
This talk about the drought: Tilled vs. No-till
