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North Central Illinois | Dr. Gruver,
"Sometimes plug with residue" is the biggest thing I struggle with. Not a problem with low residue conditions and good soil tilth. The challenge is I am trying to increase the amount of surface residue that I leave. Especially as I am simultaneously reducing the depth of my primary tillage. Rolling shields don't allow adequate weed control close to the row. Some shields in better condition might help, but I have barely found enough old rusty ones to set up my one cultivator so far. One issue I had this year was with soil buildup on the lower edges of the shield when I had to cultivate with dew on the plants. That keeps the shield wet, and soil builds up enough that the shields start bending crop plants over too much allowing some to be buried unless I stopped every few rounds and scraped the mud off of the shields.
I think that there is hope of having fairly good results with a properly set up lilliston rolling cultivator with panel shields on the gangs, but I don't have a full set to experiment with. The lilliston is my go to tool for laying by corn. I do then have to do something to level ridges off before planting the next crop though.
I have been running my 3/4 sweeps next to the row in the "wrong" orientation with the long wing toward the crop row. That allows working soil close to the row, while leaving a wider gap between the shank and the shield. I am running 8" sweeps. I may try switching to 10" sweeps to allow the shank to be a little further from the row. In a few desperate situations, I have run just one flat shield in soybeans and been impressed with how well it works. Just enough soil deflection to allow the beans to find their way back out of the "bathing" in dirt that they receive. Whenever I first cultivate beans, I think of how my father would NOT be pleased by how many soybean plants have one leaf or less visible. I'd be scared of never being asked back if I had cultivated someone else's crop, but a few days later, I wish perhaps I had been a bit more aggressive.
I'm hoping to get a chance to set up a rear mount IH cultivator with mechanical guidance before spring. After meeting Deaner and his son this summer, I am hopeful that it can make cultivating with manual steering a little less of a white knuckle experience. I might not be as bothered by stopping to unplug shields if I could notice it before wiping out hundreds of feet of crop row.
Photos are before and after first cultivation, then 6 days and 2" of rain later. This amount of residue plugged the shields fairly regularly. This was corn the previous year that was grazed by a flock of ewes over the winter, then tilled lightly a couple times in the spring, then once tilled with a field cultivator ahead of the planter. I'm hoping the rotavator that I bought this spring will do a little better job sizing the residue from the stalks that I have ewes grazing now.
Edited by Blusteryknollfarm 1/22/2020 17:55
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new series of videos on the art and science of row-crop cultivation
