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| Yeah the wind and corn residue is a problem with out wind out here. Further east they can't relate to winds blowing +40 mph for days at a time, so strip till or even no-till COC seems to be easy for them. The problem is especially bad if you run down stalks during harvest, those areas tend to blow clean and windrow in the adjacent standing stalks. I know when I fall strip till it doesn't look very good UNTIL the wind blows for a while. After about 2 or 3 weeks the leaves and shucks eventually end up settling out in the valleys between the berms. It looks pretty good by spring. But I still need row cleaners on the planter to get through the rest of it. And even then there are some rows that get a little smothered with residue after planting. But it probably only accounts for less than 5% of the field. Unfortunately this year it sounds like you don't have that kind of time. I didn't get all mine done last fall either with late harvest and early frost.
I haven't figured out a magic bullet for this....yet. I was actually thinking about having someone run a vertical tillage(turbo-till or even a Phoenix harrow) machine immediately in front of the strip till rig. The idea is to knock the stalks down and pin some residue with dirt. But you need to get through it with the strip till BEFORE the wind has a chance to blow. Then your strips will be the high ground and any residue left loose will get caught up in between the strips. And if it blows at least it won't be laying on top of your strip. You almost need to either leave all the stalks tall and intact, or run them all down.
I've tried the idea running a light pass with a disc, but it ended up being a failure, because the disc loosened too much soil and the strip-till rig couldn't move the mixture of dirt residue.
Given the lack of rain in the fall and spring lately to promote residue breakdown, high yields and residue loads in irrigated corn, late harvest, and pushing for early spring planting, genetics for promoting stalk integrity, fungicides(fungus is part of the normal decay process), finding a way to deal with the residue the following year without heavy tillage is something that we are going to have to figure out. When the wind blows it makes it much harder. But to have your field of corn dependant on the how the wind blows is not something I like, in fact its pretty stressful to do everything right and then a windy day smothers out your seedlings.
For now the solution might be stover collection for COC acres. Either sell it to a feedlot, or make a compost pile. I experimented with the compost pile two winters ago and it might actually be something that I might try on a larger scale in the future. I had a neighbor roll up about 7 CS bales and I broke them up and made a pile...added some 32% N and got it cooking. In about 4 months I had a nice little pile of compost ready for spreading with a manure/litter spreader. Too bad we sold our old Hesston stacker years ago, it would be about perfect for collecting large volumes of corn stover and making piles. Just collecting 25% of the light residue would make a huge difference.
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corn residue moving in strip till
