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Jim

Posted 4/24/2008 00:54 (#364067)
Subject: Strip tilling into VERY green rye cover crop (pics)

Driftless SW Wisconsin

One of the interesting things about my job is that there is always something new!

Today I was in the field near Moline IL with a customer who farms on the sandier soils right along the Mississippi River. We were just starting up a 16 row 30" Pluribus strip till system with airbags and high speed kit on a 40ft Moore-built 3 pt lift assist toolbar and a Cat 755 tractor with RTK.

He uses rye as a cover crop to keep the sandy soils from blowing. He had disced the cornstalks in this field after harvest last fall also using the disc to incorporate rye seed which had been broadcast on the surface.

He uses Round-up to kill the rye but this year with all the wet cold weather and since RU only works on green growth, he had just sprayed this field a few days ago. It was just starting to turn brown near the roots. In past years he had been full tilling the field prior to planting.

This was the GREENEST field I have ever tried to strip till! We have gone into cover crops before but they had been sprayed and pretty well brown/dead.

The sandy soils here are also different. What we ended up with, as my son Joe often tells me, is "go faster". with 35 psi in the airbags we were able to till 5" deep x 9" wide in 7-10" tall green rye at 11 mph! The customer mentioned the computer in the cab was reading 55 acres per hour at times.

I do not want to give the impression we can do this in every soil etc, but this might be of general interest as an example of what can be done in a cover crop. I suggested that this coming fall he try leaving the corn stalks standing and maybe air drill the rye in....not sure of the economics of the air drill vs the disc however.

In any case the rye had certainly sucked the moisture up as well as provided wind cover. In my trip across about 1/2 or 2/3 the width of northern IL, we were one of just two tractors I saw moving in the fields all day, both ways. While the temperature was good most of the ground is still WET.

The strips came out remarkably well - any of the clods you see will disappear when the planter trashwheels hit them and level the planting surface. The strips would also look better if the crop had been completely killed and brown.

Thank you to this customer. I had one arm curled around the handrail pretty tightly at 12 mph. Good mixing action of Joe's high speed kit broke up much of the sod clumps.

A very interesting day! Here are the photos. By the way they are NOT touched up other than to resize. The green is a bit different due to use of two different cameras, one still, one video (wider format).

Jim at Dawn

edit note: the lift assist wheels in the photos MUST be in float when in the field - we use the top link on the 3-point to maintain toolbar orientation. The lift assist is plumbed to a separate valve, not the 3-pt. Wings on the bar are also pinned out flat, not floating. This is a NICE toolbar by Moore-built.

Edited by Jim 4/24/2008 01:22