We have had a lot of requests to do field demos of our strip till system this fall. Today I was in NW IL in wheat stubble in hills with rocks. Very different terrain than many of our demos.

By now you would think there would be some corn stalks available to run in but not in northern IL. Even the forage harvesters are just starting to roll. "Cream corn" is about the only way to describe the crop right now.

The customer here was interested in how well we could seal and general operation in hills and rocks - there were many just below the surface, especially on the hillside shown.

We were putting down 160 and 180 units of N - 180 on the hillside as an extreme case to check for losses then 160 units which is a more normal rate in some wetter ground along the creek on the edge of the field. I suggested that we use less N but the customer says that is what he has been applying with his knife type applicator so we started with the higher rates.

We were pleased with the sealing even on the fairly severe side slope. While we had the aNH3 Equaply system on the bar, for simplicity of hook-up we were using an older fixed rate continental system which you can see bolted to the hitch. Even with this low tech system the strips looked good with almost no losses.

One of the photos shows the bar lifted so we could see the gas actually coming out. I have to say I was very pleased with the sealing. The customer is planning on going to a 24R30 system which will run at 7 mph.

Here are some photos from today. I'll be near Springfield, IL in W C IL at another demo tomorrow then some high yield circle pivot cornstalks in NE.

Jim at Dawn 

On edit - one of the key things we seem to need to demonstrate to folks is that you CAN put down ammonia without a traditional knife.

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