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No-till Guys.... Who, What, When, and Why
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Posted 12/11/2017 22:22 (#6423001 - in reply to #6417969)
Subject: RE: No-till Guys.... Who, What, When, and Why



I am most likely in an entirely different environment than you. My reasonings apply to only my farms for my area.

My father and I were some of the last to give up moldboard plowing in our area. We tried an EarthMaster; then we added another after a short bout with a one-way disk for a second tillage tool. Worked fine on our timber soils, but gave us a compacted layer on our dark soils and cost us about 10 bushels per acre in bean yields. Back to the EarthMasters.

We were able to move our compaction layer from plow depth down to our EarthMaster shank depth. In wet falls, we got across the ground, but I could feel in my gut we were probably doing more damage than good, (we were getting no shattering effect in marginal conditions.). U of I agronomy professor told my father during a phone call that to eliminate compaction, rip 1 inch deeper each trip over the field ! Hmm...

Over a couple of decades, I most often noticed our soils were in prime condition for planting when I would check their dryness for field work in the spring, before we touched them. But... we had to work them down and apply chemicals, perhaps even apply nitrogen, then work them again (because that's how we had always done it). That's what all of our neighbors were doing.

I was especially impressed with our bean stubble that had been fall applied with nitrogen. The nitrogen track was usually perfect for planting, but not straight enough for planting (of which I took some pride). And the knife track had been tilled 7 to 8 inches deep ! It was about this time I saw a picture of some farmer in a magazine that had applied his fall nitrogen with an applicator that had markers on it. THAT'S WHERE I WANTED TO BE.

My fertilizer dealer had 2 other farmers that wanted markers mounted on a toolbar. He set it up for us. At the time, the ASCS office had designated some of my soils as Highly Erodible and I was forced into No-Tilling several acres of corn. Even though our Cycle 800 Early Riser was getting the stand we wanted, our No-Till yields always suffered compared to our conventional. Hard to explain to absentee landowners.

My first year with Strip-Till, we ran several side by side comparisons. It was a season on the dry side. While only hoping to match our conventional yields, the dry July and August made the bare soils of the conventional suffer. Not only did the Strip-Till match our conventional, it beat it by a very few bushels in all of our side by sides on soils I was very familiar with. I was pleased.

I did the same side by sides with soybeans on EarthMastered strips conventionally worked and planted, fall-disked and stale planted stalks and No-Tilled stalks. My Dad bragged on the EarthMastered strips all summer for good reason; they grew faster, canopied quicker and were taller than the other two. But the EarthMastered strips were dead last in the triplicated plots that fall. And amazingly, the yields held within a few tenths of a bushel clear across the plots.

Now... years ago, I was one of those farmers that used to always rip high traffic ends in my fields just for good measure. My brother had a half section farm with the storage bins in the middle of one side. The end-rows of one particular field caught ALL the traffic of big wagons and straight trucks from this 360 acres. Knowing this field would be No-Tilled beans the following spring, I asked if he wanted me to rip the ends. He said, "Why ? I never do and they've always been OK."

I watched these end rows. I was the one that harvested them the following fall. That was the first field I ever cut that made 70. Those impossibly packed end rows registered 72 on my first-ever Ag-Leader yield monitor. Grain tickets later verified the 70 bushel yield.

While good drainage is our #1 problem, compaction is #2, be it from heavy rains, unnecessary traffic or a wet fall. I now have an in-line ripper that I check fields with in the fall by making a pass from corner to corner. If I have a problem, this tool let's me know in short order. And it does it without disturbing my surface cover or destroying my soil structure. We ran about 240 acres this fall. If I don't screw it up, we shouldn't need to rip those fields for several years. Be cautious, do not fall into the religion of any method you choose. I'm always keeping an eye out for something better. It'll come along one day.




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