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southern MN | Yup - I read this thread & didn't get it, until I finished up some threads below. :)
I do something a little odd compared to the others around me. I graze some cornstalks over winter up here in Minnesota in the heavy wet clay soils. This ground typically only gets a disking & planted in spring. To mark the field outlines, I plow one round around them - keeps the cattle away from the single wire fence.
Year after year after year, the crop planted onto that plowed patch comes up & yeilds a bit better than the rest of the field. It's never been worse looking.
Probably doesn't prove anything. However fertilizer, planter, hybred, spraying, & those types of variables are all 100% equal for me.
The cattle could make some varribles. Disking probably doesn't make the best seedbed. None of this is notill - just less till & most till. So it doesn't prove anything about the multi-year advantage true notill.
But the soil dried out & heated up seems to make a better crop around here _most_ years from this odd little experiment.
On the other hand, my best field of corn _ever_ came off of one of these fields - the cattle got to walk through a bean field to graze the corn fields. Turns out it was a long dry fall & they sucked up all the bean hulls first. Anyhow, very light tillage in spring & just hit the right weather, was the best whole-field averages I've gotten off of a typically wet & lower yeilding patch. So, real low till _can_ work out real good too.
In fact the last 2 years my bean stubble has only been run over by NH3 & a field cultivator in spring - no fall tillage. Been lucky with dry springs. Some year I will lose a little on that practice. Some years it seems to work pretty good, save a few bucks in fuel & time.
This year I have corn on lightly worked & typical worked bean stubble, corn on alfalfa plow down with no NH3, corn on grass sod, corn on spring worked grass sod, and corn on plowed corn. A little bit needs sidedressing yet, the alfalfa won't get more than the 4# of starter N, most had spring NH3, and so on.
Huge variables between the different fields, I won't be able to prove a thing, but going to be kinda fun to see what differences show up & what info I can glean from all those unscientific variables.
Sorry I got off topic, I didn't even mention what type of planter I have!!!!
;)
--->Paul
Edited by paul the original 6/15/2007 01:19
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If you like John Deere planters don't look
