One of the interesting things about my job is there is always something new to learn. I am also fortunate to often be working with innovative, thinking farmers. We are working intensely on strip till as shown in Joe's post below. And there are some areas, mostly drier western areas, where straight no-till is a more appropriate tillage system.

Recently I was in the field in one of these drier areas, west central SD (west of the Hwy 281 "shower curtain"), working with a very interesting customer who is running our new Dawn Gfx floating remote-adjust row cleaners on a 36 row 20" DB60 with JD RTK guidance, Tru-Count row unit shutoffs, JD air row unit down pressure, and JD & "Seed Sense" planter monitors.

In every no-till, ridge-till, strip-till and even min- or conventional-tilled field of corn on corn I can remember, producers generally plant the new corn crop in the same direction as the old (last year's) rows for many different reasons.

In drier climate areas especially however, the newer often Bt varieties of high-yielding, strong rooted/strong stalk seed corn have stalks that just don't break down in the long cold winter the same as older varieties did. This build up of residue over a couple seasons in northern-climate, corn-on-corn no-till often leads to getting out a tillage tool after a couple years.  Any attempt to vary the planting direction in the past also left large areas either with overlaps and double planted (= low yield) or bare areas (= no yield).

Technology on the planter seems to be able to change that.

Planting between the old rows leaves a tough stalk standing right where oyu want to plant the third spring. In this northern climate, often that stalk in your way still looks pretty much as it did behind the combine when it was harvested! This has discouraged some producers from going to continuous no till corn.

Running into corn on corn with this innovative SD customer, the combination of his Gfx row cleaners, shutoffs and RTK was amazing to watch. He made two 60ft wide passes around the outside of this large rectangular field and then took off at about a 10 degree angle across the old rows!

The advantage of this running at an angle is that by dialing up the pressure on the floating , frame-mounted Gfx we were able to clear and level a path for the planter row units which ran smoothly right behind on a cleared mostly residue free path.

The rtk left near perfect guess row spacing and the GPS-controlled row unit shutoffs were amazing to watch clicking on one or two at a time as we crossed the end rows previously planted! There is barely one square foot of this large field which is not properly planted and not one square foot double planted even though we are making "point rows" every round!

Planting at an angle like this left very few stalks standing. The plan is to come back 10 degrees next year. The seed was very nicely planted using the Gfx and two Curvetines per row, even where we were crossing the old row. The Curvetines at 2 per row are probably an essential part of this system giving us great seed to soil contact even in these conditions with very little down force required. 

We had an Agcam video camera on the planter bar. Here is my first attempt at cutting/posting video.

www.dawnequipment.com/images/DawnGFXCornonCornJDDB60.wmv

We are going at about a 10 degree angle to the old corn rows. Please keep in mind this is on 20 inch rows (20 on 20) corn also!

Here also are some still pictures. Note this corn had been harvested with a cornhead with new knife rolls so there is a lot of loose residue and short, stiff stubs. This was also 20" pretty fair yielding corn for the area and weather last season. Even though the planted rows are not as black and clear as we are used to with strip till or 30" rows, there was almost NO residue in the seed slot with the seed. Most of the surface residue falls back in behind the planter. With the excellent soil life/worms etc in this field I will bet much of the residue seen left will disappear over the summer. I can't wait to see the stand.

Thank you to this SD customer for his help. It should be very interesting watching his corn emerge. This is an example of how several different technologies are coming together to open a whole lot of new possibilities. Even something as simple as planting corn at an angle can have very important benefits in some areas.

Jim at Dawn

Note how the field almost looks a bit tilled when done - that may be a good thing in this area - but all residue is still on the surface acting as a mulch, not sucking N from the soil breaking down. The Agcam transmitted to a trailer at the edge of the field and worked remarkably well. Another bit of helpful technology!

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Dawn Gfx Corn on Corn at Angle 5-15-08 IMGA0013.JPG (45KB - 636 downloads)

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Dawn Gfx Corn on Corn at Angle 5-15-08 IMG_0657_4.JPG (87KB - 681 downloads)

Dawn Gfx Corn on Corn at Angle 5-15-08 IMG_0660_2.JPG (86KB - 585 downloads)