No-Till Farmer Blog

We often talk about the value of soil porosity and soil biology, and we talk about macropores and earthworms, but a video taken by Dave Robison of Cisco Seeds really did a nice job of visually portraying a good soil profile built upon high earthworm populations (and numerous earthworm channels), the benefits of cover crops, good tile drainage and more.

In this video, you can see smoke from a diesel engine that’s pumped into pressurized tile emerging from the macropores of a corn field. It’s a pretty neat site to see the smoke rising up from the soil. You can see more videos at www.plantcovercrops.com.

Frank Gibbs, NRCS soils specialist, presented this experiment in Williams County, Ohio.

Last night, I didn’t watch President Obama’s speech on his economic plan. After the first few minutes of watching enthusiastic applause for the President from the members of the House and Senate, and others, I just couldn’t bare to watch it. Our elected leaders deserve our respect, but count me as one of many individuals who are having trouble putting my faith in government. It just seems that too many politicians are living in their own little world inside the Beltway, oblivious to the real world outside D.C.

Today, I received an e-mail from one of the communications agencies I correspond with regularly that offered a video of the Birds Point Levee disaster this past spring. Watching this video once again reminded me why I probably felt the way I did Thursday night as the President was about to address the nation.

While I realize the Army Corps of Engineers believes it was proper to blow several holes in the levee to avert a possible disaster in Cairo, Ill., what it did to the farmland and communities in the New Madrid flood zone has been nothing short of disastrous. It appears some of the assumptions they made were just flat-out wrong, and the damage to this area may be far greater than anticipated.

I don’t have all the facts; this is just one view of the disaster. But the video suggests that our government that created the disaster in this area — the disaster didn’t occur naturally, it was the government that decided when and where the disaster would hit — has not done anything for the people whose lives were impacted.

Watch the video. You’ll see some amazing images of soil erosion and destruction, and you’ll hear how devastating this event has been on folks impacted by the Birds Point Levee disaster.

It’s almost September — where did the summer go?

How do your crops look?  Ours look good, but have had plenty of stress of planting in near mud, then record heat and rapid growth. I’ve never seen corn grow that fast in my 61 years.

Look at your fields and find out what is really going on inside them. Here, the corn is not so good 20 rows in.

The ProFarmer Crop Tour, and all the pictures on Crop Talk, has spurred a lot of farmers to look at their crops. I’ve been studying them again all summer and I really wonder about Goss’s Wilt.

Some good friends did their own crop tour and they think ProFarmer is even high on their yield estimates. They think Goss’s Wilt has really wrecked the U.S. corn crop and will again.

Look up Goss’s Wilt. It’s a bacterial blight that was first found in Nebraska in 1969. There is concern our plant genome and farmer practices have led to the outbreak of this disease in the last few years.

I would like to hear a good pathologist who can communicate to farmers speak on the disease followed up by a farmer who understands it from his fields and has taken action against it.  I think that is something we could all learn from.

On soybeans, it’s weed resistance that is the rage again this year. The Roundup Ready program is failing in more and more states as resistance builds up and resistant weeds spread. It “looks pretty good” in so many places, but there is a false sense of security.

I just looked at a “clean field” of RR soybeans that looked really good and were well-podded.  I found 3 patches of resistant weeds in it that glyphosate didn’t control.

Here in southwest Ohio, the main weed culprits are marestail at No. 1, closely followed by giant ragweed and common ragweed, lambsquarter and pigweed. Redroot pigweed, and its cousins Palmer amaranth and tall waterhemp, have wrecked a lot of soybean acres in the U.S. this year.

That’s why I’m on a mission to learn about sprayer-tank chemistry, glyphosate soil residual and glyphosate resistance. Learning never stops and this is especially true of no-till and how we farm today.

Hope this finds you all well, some of our good no-till friends are ill and we pray for them all.  A lot of us older no-tillers are starting suffer from our age, and this crazy spring didn’t do one bit of good for us on that issue!
 
I’ve been bugging Darrell for a good tank-chemistry classroom for us no-tillers who spray. We’re finally getting our own sprayer and commercial pesticide license, which has brought back all the memories of trying to kill weeds before RR.

Farming was too easy for us no-tillers and all farmers when that stuff came out, and now we have so many resistant weeds we have to go do what we should have done in the first place: Read labels, follow them and learn about adjuvants and tankmix partners.
 
Ignite or Gramoxone are contact killers, so they require more water and different droplet size than glyphosate.  Marestail, tall waterhemp and resistant pigweed or palmer amaranth has made us all re-think this spray-issue deal.
 
The crop in Ohio has really caught up, with fields tasseling now or wanting too, but it’s all confused. I wrote a blog on that issue this morning at www.hymark.blogspot.com.  I hope it makes you think about your no-till cornfields because ours are confused!
 
Spraying is job one this week in Ohio, so farmers have all kinds of questions about adjuvants, glyphosate tie-up of manganese and other nutrients, how to kill tall weeds, how to kill weeds that didn’t die the first trip, and so forth and so on.  Tons of questions, few answers!
 
We’re thankful though for the heat and moisture, and for places like the NNTC, where we can all go learn and talk about these things this winter.  I have spent all my life killing weeds and learning how to build and save soil instead of tearing it down. 

Life and Mother Nature hit me hard this spring! Hope to talk to you in January if not before.

I have three boys who play baseball. If you want any better explanation of how no-till can help your farm’s soils, all you need to do is see some of the baseball fields my boys play on.

This past week, our home field with its all-dirt infield was as hard as concrete. In fact, it would have been easier to use dynamite to find the post for second base. It took a lot of effort to dig up the dirt with a spaded shovel.

When I told my wife just how horrible of shape that field was in (not to mention you could see an erosion gulley near the third-base line), she said she was surprised because we’ve had a lot of rain and she thought that would have loosened up the soil.

That got me to thinking that perhaps a lot of no-till unbelievers must have the same perception.

Here’s the reality. It was because we’ve had so much rain that the exposed dirt was that hard. It had taken a pounding from rain and once it dried and baked under the sun, it became concrete. Imagine your seedling plants trying to emerge through that hard layer.

Folks talk a lot about the cost, time and fuel savings of no-till, but a bigger benefit, in my opinion, is that the residue — or trash, as some skeptics say — actually absorbs the force of the rain and protects the soil.

Yes, there are some definite things you need to manage in no-till that you don’t need to deal with in a tillage system. That takes effort, a willingness to learn, some patience and creative thinking.

But all you need to do is walk in a long-term no-till field and the skin infield of a local baseball field to see and feel the difference.

We finally finished barley harvest last night and took our first sample of soft red winter wheat.  It rained every day but one the last ten days, not much, just enough to keep you from working full days.

The barley ranged from 30 to 90 bushels and the drowned out areas really pulled down yields.  We have had a year’s rainfall in southwest Ohio in half a year.  The test weight was down to 42-44 lbs.

The wheat sample showed 58 pounds at 15% moisture. Yields will be all over the board on it, too.  The more nitrogen and fungicide you got on, the better the yield.  Some got neither in this area this year.

An important management factor for me was the use of trychaderma again on my seed.  I used the Gaucho insecticide fungicide package with Sabrex Root trychaderma root fungicide. Both contain trychaderma I find profitable in my corn, soybeans, and cereal grains.

They both made over 10 bushels more grain and up to near 20 bushels over the insecticide/fungicide.  Another thing I do is add 2 lbs of Tillage Radish to my wheat seeding and that added near 10 bushels this year.  I had 90 bushels with both, 80 bushels with either trychaderma or radish and 70 without either.  I did not test non treated seed.

Some of my corn strips are visually different with trychaderma today and I have heard the same across the country.  I really feel any good seed company ought to just add that to all their seed, it’s well worth the dollar or so extra cost for them.  Some of the seed companies I deal with do that but none of the mainstream companies do yet.

Some fields are a wooly mess around here with so few days without rain.  Weed control is job one again this year but the biggest impact is our late crop as some corn won’t be knee high by the fourth of July next week.  We need a really good summer to make something of this crop.

Resistant weeds are worse this year as expected.  Sharpen and Ignite are becoming popular words in weed control here and more Gramoxone was used this year than any I have seen.

It’s a mixed bag in Ohio but it’s all behind maturity wise except for weeds.  The bugs really haven’t had a chance yet with all the rain.

Most of the corn got planted here with hopes of $6 per bushel but some preventive planting was taken.  I can’t imgaine what an early frost or cool summer would do to prices.

I have heard a lot of positive comments about the condition of crops planted into cover crops around here.  They are some of the better looking fields around.

There will be lots to talk about at St. Louis in January and it will be here before you know it!

Ed Winkle

While no-till farming practices have established themselves or rapidly expanded in many regions of the U.S., it appears agronomists in Mississippi have a different problem — getting no-till off the ground.

Ernie Flint, Mississippi Extension Area Agronomist, recently explained the virtues of no-till crops in an AgFax.Com submission.

Flint says that while doing research work during the 1990s, he found that cotton growing in no-till soil during a drought period transpired as much, if not more water, than plants growing in tilled soil.

Moisture tests done on soil cores showed that even though no-till soil was significantly drier, cotton plants growing in it were getting enough water to remain active, while plants in tilled soil were obviously wilted and suffering the effects of moisture stress.

“Since then,” Flint writes, “I’ve seen this difference many times in actual field environments — not only in cotton, but in other crops. Corn plants show this difference more quickly than the other field crops we grow.”

One of the primary reasons no-till plants can extract more water from soil, Flint says, is that the mycorrhizal network is still intact, whereas it has been damaged by tillage in conventional cropping systems. This network is formed by beneficial fungi that act as an extension of the plant’s root system to find water and nutrients. Flint says porosity and improved organic activity are also factors.

But these concepts aren’t catching on with many growers in the South. Flint acknowledges that no-till has some problems, just like conventional tillage, but when the most stressful periods of heat and drought arrive, no-till usually proves its worth — especially for those who can’t irrigate.

Flint knows some farmers will point out fields that suffered under no-till conversion, but he suspects those failures have more to do with poor drainage, poor fertility, low soil pH, or compaction resulting from decades of tillage and soil erosion.

“Problems like these have to be addressed before crops can be grown in any system, and especially in reduced tillage,” he wrote.

“However, I commonly see growers who go to great lengths and expense to end-run these problems without dealing with the basic soil-quality issues that would have made reduced tillage work for them.”

Flint says the adoption of a paradigm change, like converting to reduce tillage, may require generations to accomplish in his area. He says he’s often reminded that the shift to hybrid corn took over 30 years, even though the benefits were immediate and apparent.

“The conversion of Southern farmers to something as management-related as no-till may require much more time than that,” he says. “However, if no-till crops ‘weather’ this drought — as they likely will — the adoption period may be shortened.”

Here’s hoping that growers in cotton country will speed up the learning curve a bit, so they can reap the benefits of no-till that farmers in North are already enjoying. Sometimes a successful journey starts with taking that first step.

It’s good to see that the American farmer is doing more with less. In this case, they’re growing more corn with fewer amounts of applied fertilizer.

To be certain, they’re getting more technology from the ag industry to help hit those higher yields. That said, the Fertilizer Institute says that corn production has nearly doubled in the past 30 years with slightly fewer nutrients used than in 1980.

No-tillers are leading the way. For example, in our 3rd annual No-Till Practices survey answered by 502 No-Till Farmer readers, nearly 60% said they were applying less than 1 pound of nitrogen to reach their expected yield goal. That’s quite a bit less than the 1.2 pounds-per-bushel teachings of the past.

When you consider the public scrutiny farmers are placed under — some of it unfair, when you think of the fertilizer many of these same critics might apply to their lawns and see run off into storm sewers during heavy rain events — there are signs that farmers, in general, are much more responsible than given credit.

“Efficient food production and protection of the environment are not mutually exclusive goals,” says Fertilizer Institute president Ford West. “While our critics’ voices are often louder than our advocates, the numbers don’t lie. This new data shows yet one more reason that agriculture is a leader in environmental stewardship.”

I expect no-tillers to keep leading the effort to be more and more efficient with nutrients and raise the standards. It’s important that they take that leadership role.

Planters are rolling in parts of southwest Ohio. It’s still very heavy here after 2-4 inches of rain last week, and only certain fields in certain areas are fit to plant. Most of us have had 20 to 25 inches of water since April 1.

June 5 is a big day for us. Should we take prevented planting, or take partial prevented planting and plant beans, or what?  Each farm is different. I have a farm that needs fencerow and drainage work that might be a good candidate, but it grows really good crops, too. I’ll know by Sunday and will have to make a decision by then. It’s covered in headed-out rye, which is another problem to manage.

I enjoyed the last blog on the subject by Dan Gillespie. He did a better job than I did. Maybe I could have done what he did if I had pushed a little harder, but we just haven’t had many days to do anything right in Ohio.

After we plant, I’m toying with the idea to roll the rye flat and level the field for the combine header. I’ve questioned why so many farmers are rolling fields, and this might be a good chance to make my own conclusions.

There are a few fields of corn up, and I saw my first sidedressing done today.  There are a handful of soybean fields up — all no-till — and they have a big jump on these later-planted fields that are coming.

I have one farm of wheat that is about the farthest along of any I have seen, and I have another that is one of the latest. What a world of difference 2 weeks in planting dates made on final maturity.

We are in for another crazy year of weather in Ohio, and we envy all of you who have everything planted and are off to a good start to a profitable year.

Ours is yet to be planted.

Our spring in northeast Nebraska was similar to the spring of 2009 where cool, moist (not really wet) weather kept me from killing the cereal rye cover crop in the soybean stubble at an optimal time. A virtually dry last quarter of 2010 didn’t provide much moisture for the aerial-seeded cover crop to get a good start at growth going into winter. Some good snowfall in January and February helped the rye stay viable until 2.5 inches of rain fell in mid-April and got it going.

The 2.5 inches of rain was followed by very cool, moist (but not wet) conditions for 2 weeks that precluded the spraying of glyphosate to kill the cover crop. It wasn’t until May 4 that the weather gave me a shot at it. I applied 36 ounces of 5.4-pound glyphosate (Durango) and 1.125 pints of Surpass (acetochlor), along with a 1.5x rate of water conditioner because of the tough conditions.

My goal is to terminate the cereal rye at 8 inches. Knowing that I was facing 8- to 14-inch-tall rye made me aware of the fact that allelopathy and soil moisture depletion were going to be more of an issue.

I had read on a no-till cover crops listserv over the winter that allelopathy is more severe when the ground conditions are cool and wet. The gentleman blogging said that warm soil temperatures and in-furrow, pop-up fertilizer help corn plants overcome allelopathy.

Having had that experience in a low, wet area that I sprayed in spring 2010 and planted the next day — which was followed by 2 weeks of wet, cool soil conditions, I decided to wait until the soil temperatures warmed up to plant corn this year. The cold, wet soils did seem to exacerbate allelopathy and the corn in that area was behind the rest of the field in maturity and yield.

The area stayed wet through mid-July, so I believe the extended wetness was a factor as much as the rye allelopathy. Had I not been planting non-GMO corn, I would have considered planting and killing the rye after it had taken up more moisture.

I decided I’ll just take the planting season in the order Mother Nature gives it to me. It was already April 29 and I knew I’d have to plant soybeans sometime, so I no-till drilled 250 acres of soybeans, some into a rye cover crop on dryland sand corn stubble that I had aerially applied last fall. Having a GMO crop in the ground makes the cover-crop management a lot easier.

The soybeans are emerging as I write. I drilled them 2 inches deep and got 0.2 inches of rain that night. Monitoring the moisture depletion and the weather forecast, I decided to terminate the rye on May 4. It’s a good thing I did, as heat and wind on May 9 and 10 may have compromised the soil-moisture situation. The sandy soils did not dry out and the beans would have emerged even without the nice 2 inches of rainfall received over the last two nights.

So, back to corn planting we went on May 6, taking it in the order Mother Nature led us. The silty clay loam soils had dried out pretty well with 6 days of warm, windy weather. The soil temperatures were warm and it was time to plant. Knowing it was dry and with no good chance of rain in the forecast, I set the planter deeper to get a minimum 2.5-inch seed depth.

In an area where the helicopter had doubled up the rye seeding and it was 14 to 18 inches in height and very soddy, I kept the saddle tanks on the planter and the seed boxes on the upper half of capacity to ensure that I had adequate weight to cut and penetrate, place the seed at 2.5 inches, get good seed-to-soil contact, and optimally close the seed furrow.

Following 2 days of 90-degree temperatures and wind on May 9 and 10, we went out on May 11 to check for germination. The seed had germinated, with a 2-inch-long radicle and half-inch long mesocotyl. It appears planting would have been successful at typical seed depth, but a nice rainfall of 2.45 inches on two successive nights May 12 and 13 should ensure a nice even stand of corn. The half rate of acetochlor should activate and provide weed control until the floater comes with 35 gallons of 32-0-0, 6 pounds of sulfur and 1 pound of atrazine.

The post herbicide program in the non-GMO cornfield will be Steadfast, Callisto and atrazine. In the areas where the cereal rye was well established, I will look for the opportunity to take advantage of the allelopathic effect and use less or hopefully no post herbicides.

Rain makes us all good farmers. No doubt, the venture would have been more challenging with the cover crops drying out the soil to the extent they did. Now we will sleep easier.