Wallis, TX | I depends, on the area, on the farmer and the year. Here, in SE TX most beds (99%) are put up in the fall, if a farmer is bedding in the spring, there is a story to that field or he is really far behind. (Our ground is too heavy to bed in the spring without making bricks.) In the fall some fields are 're-hipped' with a disk bedder, and some are disked flat and new ones formed with either a middlebuster or disk bedder (hipper). Either way, the trend for last 20 years has been for little or no tillage in the spring, our 'no till'. Technically, I'd call what we do stale seedbed. We get up beds in the fall, spray for winter weeds, knife in or coulter in liquid fertilizer either before or after the planter. About the most tillage you'll see in my neck of the woods in the spring is a harrow of some sort knocking down the beds a little to get to moisture. I don't farm in west TX but a buddy that does usually 'runs the middles' with a buster sweep in the fall and winter. He may re-run after a heavy rain to rough up the ground to keep it from blowing. I don't know how much has gone to some sort of conservation tillage or flat planting in recent years. |