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Concordia,Kansas | Brian,
I`m east of you, 81- I 135 . I would`ve agreed with you a year ago, been on here praising no-till. I would agree we have a problem and I`m not sure what the cause is? The tillage is a quick fix, but you can`t afford to miss a crop in this environment we farm in today,
We rotate corn, wheat that fall, and the next year with milo or soybeans double cropped depending on how much water we had left on the irrigation. We run wheat, fallow, milo, double crop wheat on the dry land. I`ve never been a great dry land soybean grower, so we only use them for weed control sparingly. If I had it to do over again, I would add some sunflowers to the rotation. I had started 3 years ago playing with cover crops. I never did find anything that I felt worked GREAT here. I got rid of the cows two years ago, so didn`t need the grazing out of them.
Trust me guys, I`ve spent allot of time thinking about this. I would say my best guess is we were just pounding the ground too hard. I would have a crop or a cover crop growing twelvemonths a year. I think you have to let the soil rest sometime. I never let anything sit any longer than it took to harvest or die and plant the next crop.
I have to admit though, it`s been fun to work the ground again. We all sit here and talk about resistant weeds and the herbicides not working the way we want. How long will it be before we have to work the ground to kill the weeds? The cost of inputs keeps going up, grain markets go down. I just felt it was time to step back and do some real fallowing. I`m planing on wheat , eco-fallow milo, rip, summer fallow, and going to wheat on the dry land. The irrigated will be corn, rip, beans, and no-till corn.
I think I`m to the point in life that I can afford to slow down a little, and if I can, I think the ground can slow down with me? I know I can grow great crops with the summer fallow. The corn bean rotation has worked for a LONG time. I`m hoping that I will have a little more free time to spend with the family this way too.
Kent | |
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Anyone else concerned about Glyphosate?
