In my 3 year study at Tribune where we were measuring soil water across the cross-section, that was really the issue with plant 2 skip 2, it was too defensive and was costing us yield. This was due to leaving too much water on the table at the end of the season. P1S1 and P2S2 did a better job of extracting everything. Of course the great unknown is how much hybrid selection (and a given hybrids's root architecture) could effect this . Bob Klein at UNL advocated coming back the next year and planting skip-row row crop back into the prior year's skips.


  Lucas, i was wondering if you had a soil that was sturctured with a lot horizontal pores, that the water in the wide spacings would move to areas of high moisture to areas of low moisture via capillary action, thus allowing the plants access to that moisture.