no till alternative?

Little narrow zones of tillage deep where the row goes, the rest left undesturbed.

There are many different theories, need to find one you like & matches your soil & climate. :)

I molboard plow the cornstalks, too cold & wet not to, but last year & this year I'm not doing anything to the bean stubble in fall. I think I'll get bit on a wet spring, but works good & saves lots of fuel if things stay reasonable dry.

I have hopes of some day trying strip tillage, but that is a few years away. I'm reading & watching tho.

Notill won't work; zone tillage doesn't tickle my fancy - does not seem to do what I need done on my soils.

--->Paul

Jerry

I tried some strip till at planting time (central Iowa) once. I figured the year was going to be a drought year so I couldn't loose by experimenting. I was spilling seed into the ground with an IH Cyclo 400. On the planter unit shank, I mounted a straight shank cultivator shovel using some 1/4" plate and 5/16" U bolts. The shanks came from my JD RG4 cultivator and I put on 6" wide clipped shovels running maybe 4" deep. That rig was the first thing that hit the field. I planned to cultivate (not using an chemicals at the time) the rest of the rows shortly after planting. I did get a super nice looking stand at the spike stage, but it rained for the next three weeks after planting and the weeds took over. There wasn't corn to harvest that year, and the beans only did 20 bushels to the acres treated the same way.

In retrospect, if I'd sprayed 48 ounces of glyphosate per acre while planting it might have worked, but its not Minnesota where the soil so much needs to be warmed.

I have little doubt but what the horizontal shovels created their own hard pan just under them.

And I have had a collection of twisted bolts and u -bolts. I had to borrow a metal detector to find the cultivator shanks that fell off in the piles of stalks from the dump rake effect those shanks had. I suppose those 5/16" bolts were a little small considering that on the JD cultivator, the shanks were held on with 5/8" bolts and don't break off.

Gerald J.

Welding & fabricating is the simple part. Getting the process right is the hard part. :)

Do you alternate planting between rows year to year - easier clearing, or plant on top of the old row which controls traffic & compaction - but is much harder trash flow?

--->Paul