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SW MN | The hardest thing about these practices is getting started. They aren't intuitive and you don't get results instantly. It takes trial and error to adapt this stuff to your conditions and make a system that works.
None of our land has had real tillage in the last 5 years. We do spring strip till with a Dawn Pluribus unit ahead of corn, but don't go more than about 4" deep. The soybeans get no-tilled. We started cover crops about 5 years ago and are to the point now where we have a system that seems to work consistently and keeps live roots in our soil all year round, except for dormancy during winter. It's taken effort and time to get here, but we are to the point now where the benefits are really showing. Keep in mind this is my area, soils, weather, and it may not translate to somewhere else.
With that in mind - a couple observations from this spring with all the water and cold temps. We planted some of the earliest corn in the county and I think much of it had to do with our soil structure and the spring strip till system. Our equipment didn't sink in - the soil supported the weight. I pulled that strip till rig through a some sketchy spots, even drove through water, and didn't have an issue. The soil doesn't seem to clod up like it used to, and after the sun shined on the strips for a while there was a nice seed bed. So I could go into a wetter spot, and first of all get through it without getting stuck or leaving ruts, and then also make it into a spot that was fit to plant using the shallow disk strip till to open up the surface. (Straight no-till for corn would certainly be harder!)
On weed suppression, here's a picture I took this spring while no-tilling soybeans. The side with all the dandelions didn't get cover crops interseeded in last year's corn crop. On the other side, you can see the rye from that interseeding.
We usually spray a tank mix of burndown + pre with residual prior to planting. But everywhere we had rye this year, there weren't really any weeds. So we sprayed the pre but left the Roundup out, and let the rye keep growing for a few weeks while the beans came up. Sprayed the rye when the beans were 4-5" tall. I wouldn't have believed the weed suppression prior to seeing it myself. Note that these fields have been managed pretty well for weeds, so there wasn't a huge amount of pressure, but there's no way we'd have been able to skip the burndown like that in the past.
 (dandelions (full).PNG)
Attachments
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 dandelions (full).PNG (175KB - 62 downloads)
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Combine Cover Crop Seeder
