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Jim

Posted 11/21/2008 21:19 (#513060)
Subject: Combining deeper fall tillage with spring strip till in Illinois (pics)

Driftless SW Wisconsin

One of the fascinating things about agriculture is that you can always learn something new.

We have some long time planter attachment customers in West Central Illinois who I know well enough to know they are pretty well wedded to fall tillage and fall anhydrous ahead of corn.

They use a combined fall deep (8-9") tillage and anhydrous application version of strip till in soybean residue. They traditionally use a 16R30 DMI Nutri Till'r to till and place deep ammonia in the fall in bean stubble ahead of corn. The Nutri-Till'r raises a bit of a berm in bean stubble which they plant corn on top of in the spring. They have been very successful at raising very good corn on bean stubble in their very good soils this way.

I was then somewhat surprised to get a call when they asked to have a Pluribus strip till demonstration recently.

As many other folks in the area, there are times when these folks want to get away from a rigid 50/50 corn/bean rotation and have some corn on corn. The Nutri Till'r type tool, however, works differently when it is run between harvested corn rows than it does in bean stubble.

Yesterday (Thursday 11/20) I brought our demo strip till bar to this WC IL area. It was cold and windy but runable.

These thoughtful customers showed me some very nice NH3 strips made in the past week or so with the Nutri-Till'r 8" deep in bean stubble with a nice little berm. Then we went to where they had run the same machine and applied nh3 in some adjacent harvested corn ground which will be planted again to corn in the spring.

Especially in the combine tire tracks the deep shank applied ammonia but didn't leave the same nice strip that it did in bean stubble. Evidently this same situation occured last year and resulted in some stand issues when planting in the spring. The slot was an open crack in some places and a depression in others. They mentioned the ammonia was placed but they were looking for some way to improve the planting conditions over this slot next spring.

We have run into this same type problem in S MN and elsewhere where folks had run a fall ripper to make a slot with the intent of planting on it in the spring but ended up like planting into a wet canyon.

Yesterday we experimented running the Pluribus on harvested stalks ground AHEAD OF the Nutri Till'r; running the Pluribus DIRECTLY OVER AND INLINE WITH Nutri Till'r slots made in stalks about 2 weeks ago and running the Pluribus AT AN ANGLE TO Nutri-Till'r slots made about 2 weeks ago.

The result was that the combined Nutri Till'r/Pluribus system looked very good in all three cases. All three will probably be much more reasonable place to plant in the spring than the Nutri till'r in stalks alone.

I personally feel the best combination for this customer's corn on corn and their heavy black soils and current equipment will ultimately be fall Nutri Till'r placed nh3 with a spring Pluribus pass over and inline with the Nutri Till'r slots. Maybe even better is to place some 28%+10-34-0 if liquid or 40 units of urea (maybe 50% esn) + dap or 0-0-60 and micros (as/if required) if dry fertilizer is used.

This spring Pluribus "touch-up" provides some initial fertility to the corn until it reaches the fall nh3. Or if the soil test shows all is ok then just run the Pluribus to build a nice clean fresh black mound to plant into rather than a depression from fall.

Without getting into rates here, this could be a very efficient system. The spring pass with the Pluribus will have a wide time window. And if some years you can't get all the fall nh3/Nutri Till'r work done you just up the spring Pluribus rates a bit and maybe side dress the rest as nh3 or whatever.

I was very impressed by the ingenuity of these customers. They don't want to change a system that has worked well in their area but are looking at using our tool in a different way and in a different place than we had been thinking of.

Here are some pictures of making Pluribus strips directly over and inline with the Nutri Till'r slots and also at an angle to them. There may be places where the disruption of the old row by running at an angle does some positive things especially in a continuous corn system.

Planter row unit shutoffs and autosteer/mapping make this spring stripping at an angle to last year's stalks and rootballs a real attractive possibility for some folks and situations. SD Gfx friend and customer who no-till planted 20" corn on 20" corn at an angle reports excellent results from the combine.

Here are some pictures of some runs yesterday. Thanks to these folks for making life interesting!

Jim at Dawn

Edited by Jim 11/21/2008 21:36