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| I was full till for quite a while, doing my plowing in the spring so the standing stalks captured snow that would have blown past otherwise. That made my corn planting late so instead of the typical 108 day corn I often planted 98 day corn. Then I went no till. I really liked the way the stover and even the bean straw kept heavy rains from washing the place in the spring, but especially when planting beans after good corn, the delay for drying the soil and warming it were significant. I had good corn in 2007 from a 34K population but only 111 pounds of N applied with the planter and side dressed when the corn was 4' tall. Come the next spring I hit the field with a burn down early in May, primarily glyphosate, and CPS put down Prowl H2O a week later. It took until the middle of June for the ground to warm up to 60 for germinating beans under that stover and to dry most of the wet spots enough to hold up the tractor and planter. Planting 4 rows I didn't have the long boom to drive alongside my wet spots. I had to drive around some of them, then went back and tried to plant them a week later. Anyway the weeds were still brown from the burn down and Prowl. Mid July I discovered the lambs quarter was up about 4" so I sprayed glyphosate again. I found the spots I'd gone around my first planting were bare from more rain flooding them and found some spots I'd missed in my replant. So I ordered some 0.9 maturity beans from Albert Lea Seed House and planted them very thick in the bare spots. By harvest some of the July plantings had drowned out but those that hadn't had hard beans the size of BBs. I doubt they stayed in the combine, but at least I had ground cover and a clean field at harvest. Without out digging, I think the bean yield was about my average, 48 bushels. The next year I rented (crop share) to a strip tilling neighbor. It took him three years corn on corn to beat my 2007 low N yield and he has increased the yield since.
I really liked the way pure no till protected the ground from rain erosion. Planting beans a month late didn't help their yield. Bean straw didn't delay warming and drying for corn so much. I accept strip till as a compromise that gets the strips dried and warmed up for more timely planting, and so far in 7 years of strip till my farm hasn't suffered from heavy rain erosion while full tilled farms in the neighborhood have contributed considerable soil to the road ditches from that heavy rain erosion.
Strip till equipment is hard to afford on the small farm but my tenant's Soil Warrior seems to do quite well on the couple thousand acres he rents.
Gerald J. | |
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Why does corn respond to tillage?
