No-Till Farmer Blog

It’s never too early to start inspecting your combine, corn header and bean platform. I use to do it myself, but now I have the dealer check the equipment over.

The dealer has a checklist and knows what he is looking for. I’m also capable of making the repairs myself, but the dealer can do it in less time. I use a thermo gun, and do a temperature check of bearing, chains, etc., during a 30-minute stationary run to help catch any possible future failures.

The dealer inspection can also help you decide if it’s time to repair or upgrade to a newer machine. For example, an old corn header needs $10,000 in repairs vs. trading for a brand-new header costing you $40,000 in boot money. In my opinion, from a business standpoint, you are better off to repair the old header. I know I will pay more income tax, but isn’t that a good thing?

Making post-emergence spray applications allows you a great opportunity to visually see any areas of your crops that need special attention.

When I get a break from rain events, I take the time to write down notes on some of the problem spots I’ve identified in my fields. Make sure to accurately mark the problem area either by using GPS or stepping them off.

After I’ve completed harvest in the fall, I like to come back and treat the area. I post notes on my office bulletin board so I have easy, quick access to them. I have had great success at treating yellow-leafed corn as a result of potassium deficiencies even though results from grid samples claimed we had adequate levels of potassium.

Even with the lazy days of summer approaching, don’t be lazy when it comes to identifying potential problems that can be corrected and make you more profitable.

I used to go out 2 weeks before planting and smooth out the gulleys that had washed in the draws from the past year. But then it occurred to me that these gullies used to be grass waterways when I was a kid.

Here’s what had happened: The waterways had been destroyed by tillage around the borders or through the use of glyphosate.

This is an excellent time of year to level off gullies and seed them down.

I sometimes think we get more soil loss from our unprotected draws and valleys than we used to in conventionally tilled fields. Think of it this way: If it washes a gulley in a draw once, it will eventually do it again!

Last spring, I seeded down 23 new waterways totaling more than 15 acres on my farms. Most of it was on non-highly erodible land soils.

I think it’s important to realize that while no-till is most helpful in protecting against erosion, it will not stop erosion in all cases. Depending upon your soil types, you may find that the best solution is to seed and maintain a grass waterway — even in no-till fields.

I enjoyed speaking at the National No-Tillage Conference last week in Des Moines, Iowa. My views on soil fertility were probably the most controversial.

In my operation, I’m trying to identify the soil fertility level where I am going to get a return on my investment — or the economic threshold — when I apply phosphorus (P) and potassium (K).

The recommended fertility levels in my home state of Illinois are 50 pounds per acre for P and 350 pounds per acre for K. My levels are less then that, but I don’t see a return on investment when I apply P and K.

All I ask for, from a fertilizer application, is to get my money back with a little profit. Would you loan $50,000 to someone and be okay with getting back $25,000?

When the data at my farm shows a return on investment, we will return to adding P and K to the entire field. But until then, we will continue to just treat any hot spots that show up.

It’s nothing personal between the fertilizer industry and myself. I’m just using the law of diminishing returns to make business decisions based on the facts at my farm.

Thanks to our cold, wet fall, our no-till research plots at Calmer’s Agronomic Research Farm are still not completely harvested.

But that raises the thought that if you’ve gotten your crops out of the field, now is a good time to think about setting up your own onfarm plots for 2010.

If you feel as if your no-till corn yields have maxed out, think about what you might be able to do to take them to the next level. Plan a few onfarm research plots for the spring of 2010 to test ideas so that a year from now, you will have some good information and data to consider.

As noted, we’re just finishing up our 2009 plots, but here is what our 2008 row spacing study that looked at 15-, 30- and 45-inch corn rows showed in yield. The 15-inch rows hit 258 bushels per acre vs. 250 for 30s and 234 for 45s.

Yield results so far appear to be similar, though we need to crunch the final numbers. I expect to continue with 15-inch row spacings overall on the farm in 2010.