Thumb of Michigan | Ed Winkle - 11/19/2009 10:27
It is not that hard Pat. Clean path, strip till or Martin notill system.
Go slow and get the job done right. Good and seed treatments really help.
Why not double crop beans here or plant radish north where it works even better!
Ed
Ed, if you're talking about the corn after wheat- been there, did all that stuff. Had many different people try many different things in this area to get it to work satisfactorily. When all was said and done, it was way more potentially profitable to plant something- anything- after wheat as a cash crop rather than corn.
My next issue with a clean strip is crusting. On our soils, crusting is directly in proportion to the amount of residue in the seed area. I like to move some, but not all, the residue. We reduced stands a couple of times in plots because of row cleaners, so we never got real serious about using them. I agree, it takes a spotless planting zone to plant corn after wheat. As I said, we give up yield potential some years by doing that, though.
I have even seen some hick ups planting corn after wheat that had been baled and chisel plowed. One neighbor tried to make that rotation work for him, had been planting beets after wheat previous to that. Disease pressure was to great with that rotation, thought corn might be better. Wasn't for them I guess.
In fact, we have some real die hard no-tillers adding more and more tillage after wheat to get soy's planted. Slugs are just kicking our butts. I have one friend in particular who's tried some very innovative methods to control them, still looses too many acres of soy's to slugs the next year. My answer has been to quit growing wheat, it doesn't compete economically with other crops for me all that often. Especially for sure this year unless the RMA or a couple of elevators change their methods of calculating falling numbers for insurance purposes.
Anyway, its not for lack of trying that I haven't been able to make a grass/grass rotation work. I don't think. Might be that SWW is different than SRW. Might be that we have more potential for disease or slugs than other areas. I have had problems planting corn after rye harvested for seed as well as ground with history of heavy quack. I'm going to stick with my theory that corn doesn't do well after a grass "here" until I see a compelling reason to change my mind.
Double cropping soy's after wheat has either been wildly successful or a bust. Our wheat harvest was way to late this year to try it here. Interplanting somehow- maybe by air?- may have more potential.
Have oilseed radish planted in all the wheat stubble as we speak. Still will probably go to a broadleaf of some kind next year. |
Alleopathy
