Jerry,

Thanks for your post and pictures.

I want to be very clear that in almost all cases, the cover crop must be sprayed and DEAD, BROWN, KILLED, KAPUT to reliably strip till into it.

Trying to strip till into living, growing triticale, "not burned down" is just not in the cards most of the time.

I realize the weather has not been cooperative for spraying this year but as a manufacturer we are still bound by the laws of physics. The Pluribus is NOT a SOD CUTTER!

A live cover crop especially has a tough clumpy root structure which does not usually in one pass break up into an ideal seedbed. Think about the conventional tillage which would be required  (and the above customer has used in the past) to make that field a seedbed!

I appreciate your kind remarks. I see the value in cover crops but they really need to be killed first - as much as possible.

Having said that, to help you out now, drop your gage wheels to the second hole from the bottom (raise the row units a bit), run the air at about 30 psi with the row unit SLIGHTLY heeled back and you should minimize the sod caught between the Swirls. Also - run as fast as you can. 10 mph seemed to generate enough turbulent flow to break up much of that sod. From you picture though you need to be running a bit shallower and with less Trashwheel. That may help. You are in the middle of 5 depth control holes and that is too aggressive in sod.

I wouldn't worry about the clods shown - they will fracture into a gorgeous place to plant one they grey off and you hit them with the Trashwheels. This is where experiencew will come in. 

Your bean stubble photos look great. I think your triticale strips don't look bad as long as we can keep the sod from filling the middle. Just raise it up. We did not plug up once yesterday while I was there, but again his soils are different. You just need less material going through the middle. Thank you.

When thinking cover crop, think DEAD!

Jim at Dawn

Question: do you have the bar able to float side to side (vertically at the 3 pt or cart) so we are not forcing it down but letting it follow the terrain?