Don,

This is corn and soybean country in the pictures above. Yes, you could put even a fine seeded legume in those strips above but that is not the plan here.

This is also 30" corn on corn pictured above.

The possible advantage to the angle planting comes mostly in a continuous corn program. If planting always parallel to last years rows, the second year corn goes down between the previous years but the third year corn comes back over now two-year old stalks and rootballs.

In ridge till days maybe 20 years ago, this was somewhat OK because stalks broke down and stalk stumps were separated easily in the spring from the rootball by the row cleaners....

Not any more. NEw high yielding, high stalk strength, often bt hybrid corn varieties, especially in the north, can be almost as tough a couple years later as they were behind the combine.

Here planting at an angle has a double benefit: 1) not all third year seeds are right down the old row and 2) the row cleaners, especially our floating Gfx or Pluribus strip till units, disrupt the prior corn rows, almost like running a "Supercoulter" over them but without the pass or compaction.

The customer who introduced me to planting at an angle is a west central SD farmer who no tilled 20" corn on corn at an angle (DB60/Gfx video on you tube)

I've thought that for some specialized situations (hillsides, light blowing areas) these fall strips might be a good place to plant or band-plant a cover crop.....then in the spring spray RU and either run the Pluribus over it again or just go in with the planter and row cleaners over the dead rye, etc. in the spring.  Lots of possibilities for different areas.

In this very nice IL area however, I'd just run the DMI and leave it until spring then run the Pluribus with maybe a little pop-up or starter as West Illini has.

Then the only thing on the planter is corn and when it comes time to plant you have a nice greyed off, warm tilled place to plant with deep tillage and nh3 underneath but no air pockets or valleys. When it is time to plant you just focus on the planting. jmho.

Jim at Dawn

Generally what happens in this situation also is that folks start out running the deep tillage all the time on all acres. Then gradually realize they don't need to do deep tillage on every corn acre every year and end up with a lot less stressful system in the fall. If you get it done fine, if you don't we'll just do the Pluribus in the spring and come back to that field next fall....

I have no idea what the rainfall is for this area. Springfield or Peoria IL airport weather station lookup would probably have that data.