Plowing pictures, and today's methods

I thought I'd send a few pictures of where my family has been with tillage, and why we've abandoned the plow for no-till, and found success.




1970... my dad in the 5020 pulling 8x16's. Anyhydrous ammonia going down to feed the years corn crop.





Planting 1970 style. Still have the 4020, drove it today.





Planting this spring... no plow, no disk- one pass with the planter into alfalfa sod. John Deere 4455 on a 7200 6 row planter. Despite a smaller planter and much more acreage, it's easier to get done in a timely fashion when you are only making one pass.




A healthy crop. Not the best we've grown, but a decent crop of silage corn, no-till planted into alfalfa. Only 10 lbs of commercial N fertilizer applied as starter, the rest came from the previous crop of alfalfa and an application of manure the year before.



My idea of healthy soil. Note all the pores- no-till doesn't mean no tillage, but instead no tillage by tractors. All those little lumps are earthworm mindens. They've eaten all the old crop residue, and incorporated any manure spread. They've done the work for us, like nature intended. The soil is firm, but very porous, with much more water infiltration ability than with tillage.

The 1970's stuff was fun, but it took a lot of capital, time, fuel, and wear parts. Today we can grow twice the crop with less fertilizer, less fuel, and less time. Yes, we use herbicides, but we did back in 1970, too.

I'm sure there are a few here that will say "that doesn't work here" etc. It does work here, and allows us to farm full time with no outside income. I'm proud of what we do, so thought I'd share.

No-till has worked well for my dad and brother for years too. His corn fields sure look strange though, using a Great Plains twin 20 inch row spacing. Ray Archulleta seminars is a good source on how no-till can work well with cover crops. He says you NEVER want rain to hit bare ground, but planted crop or crop residue.

i to watch all those plowing photos. Probably not a mole-board plow left with miles of me. Ever body that is farming any ground at all is either minimum till or full no till. Ground just washes away if plowed to any degree in these parts. Ye have been no tilling for over 30 years and I know for fact our soil is in better shape today than back years ago. Guess it just depends on what one wants and where he is located.

Must be nice to not have to do all that tractor work. Here,we have to plow(with two way rollover) to get a clean trashless surface. Them we have to work it all down. Sometimes that can take several trips. And lastly pull a land plane across it to make flat and smooth for water to flow.And then make watermarks(furrows). Some guys put furrowers on their planters to save a trip.Trash causes dams and 'wash across' and blocks water from flowing.You guys have no idea just how easy you have it. LOL.

Our land is very steep in places, flat in others, tile drained in places, and we have 5 irrigation pivots. I get your misery with irrigating...! No till has decreased the need for a lot of irrigation though, as roots go deeper than when we plowed.

I know no-til works well in many places. Some do no-til some ground around here too. My neighbor told me last spring he was doing more no/til because he had had good luck with it on a small scale for a couple years. This fall he said he was going back to tillage on most of his ground again because the extra yields more than paid for the tillage. I don't know of any successful no-til only farmers around here. Most large farmers with good planters do plant some corn into soybean stubble and some soybeans into corn with no-til drills, but that depends on the weather and soil.

Thats a big plow one day I’ll find a 5020

We no-till here in Montana. Keeps the soil in place. When you only average 12-14” of precip a year, soil likes to move when you plow it. On days when it blows really hard you stand up on a hill and look over the country side and tell which farms still summerfallow.

We had (and still have) a 100 chisel plow like yours. Haven't used it this century! Ours had 12 3 in twisted shovels.

In high school I worked for my friend's dad on their farm near Swink, CO. One time he tried to get away with just a few diskings instead of plowing. We spent a lot of time in that field trying to get the water to run down the right furrows! I sure agree with your last statement - surface irrigation adds a level of complexity to farming that until a person experiences it they have no way of comprehending what it is like.

The point of no-till is to leave the trash on top to slow down the erosion. They disc the end rows and any washouts that might happen, but mine has not had a plow in 25 years.Corn and beans have been fine,wheat was bad. Neighbor across the fence rips and has a disc,field cultivator with a rolling basket on it. One pass and plant for him,my side just plant. You just have to do what works on your ground, and what the day job says you can do.

There is lots of no-till farming done around me, even more minimum till, but every year new mole board ploughs are being sold. There seems to be a true bump in production in some land if it is ploughed after 5-10 years of no-till. And no-till isn’t an option for organic production.

Mine is so old that it was called a tool carrier before the name chisel plow waa a thing. I want to try twisted points on mine

I had always heard them called a tool carrier or tool bar, when people started talking about a chisel plow I thought it was something new not just a different name for it.

It’s nice where it works, lot of fuel savings.

Too wet here, the worms drown. We need the ground lumpy and black so the ground thaws out from 4 feet of frost and so the water has surface area to evaporate from. We farm old glacial lake bottoms here, 120 feet of yellow and blue clay sealing it up below the top soil, water doesn’t seep away, it evaporates away.

Get better worms with tillage than without.

Paul

Well I have been no min-tilling for six or seven years now. I do run a field cultivator over the bean stubble but that is the only tillage on the farm. If the yields are reduced I cant see it now. The first two or three years I did have a reduced yield but not now. This year being a dry year I saw much better corn yields than my neighbors, like 50 bushels per acre better than one neighbor across the fence who deep rips. We both fertilize the same and grow corn with the latest genetics. The last two years were really wet and though I do not have solid numbers my crops were no worse than other farms going by what my custom harvester told me.

I think Coonie will agree with me we do have to pay more attention to the planter and what kind of a job it does placing the seed and closing the seed furrow. We can be fairly sloppy planting into nice loose black soil. We can not do a sloppy job planting no till without paying a yield penalty. I happen to be very fussy about the job my planter does and I am willing to spend money on the planter to improve its no till performance. You have to get your butt out of the tractor seat and walk back to the planter to check for needed adjustments more often. This is where most guys who try no till fail. They dont want to spend a little extra money on the planter to make it capable of good seed placement, they dont want to take the time to make fine adjustments, they just want to sit in the seat and look forward for hours on end without stopping. They have to cover those acres.

I still like the looks of a nicely plowed field, I think every farmer does but when I pencil out the expense of owning a tractor big enough to deep till or plow my land the price of chisel points, broken shanks, broken arbor bolts, broken disk blades and replacing $50 bearings in the disk gangs in the fall my head spins. Then I figure cultivator sweeps, field cultivator tires, replacing bent shanks, replacing evener teeth and the bill gets higher. Now I need to figure in fuel, it takes a lot of fuel to move all this dirt. Hard pulls on the transmission puts more strain on the power train. How much does it cost to replace a power shift in a big tractor? $20,000? $30,000? I wont get into engine overhaul costs on big tractors. Rear tires digging in the ground trying to pull a big load cost what? $2,000, $3000 up to $6000 each? I have one old 4650 Deere that pulls my 12 row planter and 60 foot sprayer over 700 acres. I might put 100 hours on the tractor doing planting and spraying. I rent a tractor to pull my field cultivator for 20 hours per year. I still am uneasy about not working in the manure and liquid nitrogen otherwise the corn would be no till also.

OK I am off my soapbox. LOL

They were called chisel plows back in the day when they were being yanked around with new 3020s. Got a brochure right here for your 100 that says chisel plow.

I practice no till, too. All my field is pasture & I no till it, senor. :vD

Mike

If the price of fuel keeps going the way it won’t need to worry
about farming period

Mine says tool carrier

No gov't money of any kind? No Federal Crop insurance?

No crop insurance. 1250 acres.

Ours was too. As you can see they could be equipped with many different options for teeth. Ours was set up like today's chisel plows, although someone tried big sweeps on it once. If you put 3 inch twisted shovels on yours, you will need a bigger horse than the 3020. Ours took at least a dualed 4020, and then you went in 3rd gear. The 5020 handled it better.

Looks like my soil....most of the farm no til for 25 years. If the neighbours ask if I have the fall work all done, I reply with....no, still busy no tilling...lol!

Ben

About ten years ago, I had a fuel delivery guy ask me when I was going to start planting... I responded with "I'm done." He seemed pretty disgusted. 1/2 a gallon to 3/4 a gallon an acre to put in a crop makes for poor margins for him.

350 dairy cows here, plus 350 replacements. No manure worked in here. It works, and better than you'd think. Partnered with University of WI Discovery Farms for 7 years to document it here. Results are on
their website.

I have had excellent luck with no till for the last ten years. This year I am going to till because of all the heavy equipment going across fields to fix storm damage and I am going to add tile. I will resume no till after that, but am going to look at adding cover crops on bean years. I have heard so many mixed stories on tillage, that I just do not know the whole story. I do know that I do not want to burn that extra fuel and want to avoid the hard pan by doing the same tillage every year.

Do you also no-till your hay seedlings? With or without a nurse crop? It looks like no till works well for you. Everyone’s situation is different, big differences based on soil, types of operation, organic vs conventional , livestock vs cash crop , type of crops etc. I don’t see no till for vegetable growers and limited for organic operations. Also see occasional tillage on ground that is often no- till , sometimes to level out the rutted ground if it was a wet fall at harvest time. Also for incorporating manure, especially heavy liquid manure applications.

Both terms were used but by the mid 60s JD dropped the “tool carrier” name for their plows. I’m fact I have a official “Tool Carrier” brochure and it’s totally different. Maybe I’ll post it later. This is out of a 1965 brochure. We also have a 250F that we bought new in 1964 and it says chisel plow. Bought it with a 5010.

This is also no til type farming. Those are 3/4" wide shanks with no-til deep rip points that leave a tunnel down about 18" deep. Could pull a mole ball on each one but no need to. My entire farm gets this treatment but only when soil and crop residue are right. Too wet? Don't do it. After the soybean crop is off. Every other year. If I can.

I guess i Don't know what I am doing then. I tried the no thrill method a few times on corn and it was a miserable failure. 20 bushel per acre and could throw a cat through the field and not hit a stalk. I have with limited success no thrilled beans and where I disked the ruts shut from the wet fall previous the beans came up faster on the worked loose ground by 3-5 days versus the no thrill beans. they were about an inch tall when the no thrill beans were just coming through the surface. My brother has notilled corn and beans with similar limited success. Cor took about a 50 bushel hit and beans about even.

Yes, we have not tilled for a hay seeding since 1990... they are a lot cleaner now. Typically we either seed just before corn planting or after wheat harvest in August. If spring seeding it is after corn silage or corn grain with stalks removed for heifer feed. Here's a picture taken of me in some new seeding a few years ago.

Are you saying no till can work for everyone? What is the heaviest piece of equipment you operate on your land? When and from whom did you buy your farm from? What do you do with your manure? How do you deal with compaction?

Is this ground tiled?

My farm is in Houston Black Clay, slightly Alkaline. I have the up to ⅜" diameter, 12" white earth worms everywhere. Totally agree on your comment...."they do the work for me".