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| I began no till a couple miles north of US-30 about 2000. Most years it worked with full farm rotation corn and soybeans. In 2007 I raised good (173.2 bushel) corn on only 111 pounds of N. The stover from that made planting beans hard in 2008. I burned down the weeds mid April or mid May with glyphosate (and AMS) and CPS applied Prowl H2O within a week. I would have liked to plant beans by mid May, but the soil under the stover was in the low 50s too cold for germinating soybeans. And then there were wet spots too wet to hold up my little tractor and 4 row 7000 planter. The soil got up to 60 under the stover by mid June and so I planted, but had to go around the wet spots. The weeds were still all brown. I tried to plant the wet spots a week later but they were still too wet.
Mid July I walked the place and the lambs quarter was up about 4 inches and I found more bare spots from being drowned out and those unplanted wet spots. I ordered some 0.9 maturity beans and planted them three days later. They provided mostly shade and the field was clean at harvest. The BB sized beans from the 0.9 beans were hard but probably didn't stay in the combine or contribute to the yield.
The next year I rented the place out to an experienced strip tiller and he has been making me good money (50/50 crop share) and with the strips made in the fall he hasn't had to wait for the strips to dry and warm up. And so far there hasn't been any strip erosion despite some extreme spring rains while nearby fall tilled farms had gullies big enough to park a school bus.
I suppose I should have taken the planter out empty and used the Dawn Trash Whippers to bare strips in April, but I didn't think of that until years later.
I liked notill except for that 2008 time delay and I accept strip till as a compromise that for my farm and tenant is working well. Strip tilling equipment can be expensive but I have seen home made strip tilling equipment at ISU extension expositions that would be practical on a small farm like mine.
Gerald J. | |
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No-till vs Strip-till
