No-Till Farmer Blog

The wet spring of 2010 gives me reason to be optimistic that the rye cover crops in my highly erodible land (HEL) soybean ground will return multiple benefits. Foremost will be the ability to grow excess moisture out of the soil, providing storage in a saturated soil profile for any rainfall received and minimizing the chances of an erosion event due to saturated conditions.

Low areas that usually have the wettest conditions and highest potential for planting problems will be more trafficable and have less potential for sidewall compaction problems. These areas established better last fall because of the good soils and moisture availability. They will be ahead of the hillsides in growth.

This may allow me to get into fields a day or two earlier as well. That could be critical in a spring that looks likely to have a start to planting.

The late planting and slow start of the rye growth due to a cool, damp and cloudy fall will provide a lesson in how much cover you actually need from a cover crop.  Only Mother Nature knows at this point how much growth we’ll get in the next 3 weeks.

In the spring of 2007, we had a 6-inch rain event in the Battle Creek watershed that flooded the town of Battle Creek, causing millions of dollars of damage. One of my rye cover-cropped HEL soybean fields that lays at the top of the watershed sustained very little damage due to the extra protection. I was out planting that hillside a few days after the storm.

A neighbor called me up on my cell phone to ask how it was working and if he should go try it on his ground. I told him you just have to check the soil conditions, reminding him that I was working in a different environment than he was.

The growing rye cover crop will also sequester nitrogen that may otherwise move out of the soil profile in the event of heavy spring rains. Nutrients cycled and carbon produced in the form of plant tissue that will break down and release carbon dioxide through the growing season are a main benefit, also. I have a feeling this “greenhouse benefit” may be one of the more overlooked benefits of cover crops.

As I indicated in my earlier post, there were a lot of 240- to 260-bushels hits on the yield monitor during harvest. After reviewing my yield maps, I can confirm that most of those spikes were in areas where the cover crop established the best.

I also took some soil samples in early May and sent them to the USDA-ARS in Mandan, N.D., where they were examined under a microscope. I have some nice pictures of my very own Vascular Arbuscular Mycorrhizae (VAM) growing in my rye roots. These populations are present in the green rye cover crop at planting time in the spring and expand rapidly into the growing corn plant roots that follow.

The microscopic hyphae from the fungal mycorrhizae colonize the corn plant roots and increase net root mass volume from 10,000 to 100,000 times. Increased phosphorous uptake and the ability to remove moisture from the soil below the wilting point are some of the main benefits of the VAM.

At this time, I consider the erosion control benefits to be the most important. Any soil not lost to erosion counts toward soil building. If I am going to drop $500 per acre into land costs and inputs, I have no problem investing $30 per acre in erosion control.

Excess soil moisture grown out of the soil helps reduce that erosion. Flow areas stay more stable and sheet and rill erosion is minimized so I can make my first trip to the field either a burndown or a planting.

Yield increases due to a healthier and more biologically active soil are the gravy of the system. When you take care of your soil health, it will take care of you in return.

Last time, I wrote about considerations for the use of surface residue mulch to enhance the yield capability of no-till fields by increasing water-use efficiency.

The bottom line is that we need to keep the soil covered all year. For summer annual crops — field corn and soybeans, for example — the soil is essentially covered at full canopy. At harvest, some soil is exposed, so we plant cover crops to build soil health, capture and cycle nutrients and to improve soil structure to name a few of the benefit.

The goal is for the cover crop to keep the soil covered until the next crop reaches full canopy. When transitioning to no-till, establishing a cover crop as the first step helps guarantee great yields from Year 1.

Now, let’s look at starter fertilizer. Without a doubt, this is critically important in high-yield no-till crop production of corn. Corn and soybeans are tropical crops grown in a temperate zone and planted long before we have tropical (summer) weather.

Tillage helps warm the soil and oxidizes nutrients, making them plant available earlier in the growing season. Tillage dries the soil and decreases water-use efficiency. And, just in case no one has reminded you lately, the most limiting input for high-yielding crops is water.

To overcome cooler early season soil temperatures and nutrients that will be oxidized when the soil warms, starter fertilizers provide a tremendous advantage to the no-till crop. This is especially true in the early part of the planting season.

My focus here is on corn. The optimum placement strategy is to place part of the starter fertilizer in the seed furrow and the rest of the starter fertilizer dribbled over the row or in a band beside the row. We opt for this because the seed provides phosphorus and most other necessary nutrients through V1.

At V2, the specific demand for phosphorus is the highest it will be at any growth point in the corn plant’s life cycle. The amount of phosphorus required per pound of corn plant matter is greatest at V2. Corn roots are very small at this stage, so the fertilizer needs to be very close.

At V3 to V4, the corn plant is determining the maximum number of kernels it can potentially produce. We want to influence the corn plant to sense good growing conditions by providing ample amounts of essential plant nutrients, especially phosphorus, so the corn plant is programmed for high kernel count production at V3 to V4.

At this growth stage, corn roots are reaching to fertilizer bands within 2 to 3 inches from the row. In cool, wet soil, broadcast nutrients will in large part stay fixed and immobilized and, as such, unavailable to be taken up by the corn plants. As the soil warms, widespread plant nutrients will be oxidized by soil microbes to more mobile forms that are more easily taken by corn roots that extend outward and downward after V4.

Any stress on the corn plant during the growing season will reduce the kernel count that was set at V3 to V4. The biggest yield robber is lack of water. This is why no-till has such high yield potential: water-use efficiency — available water!

The in-furrow fertilizer is liquid. Use fertilizers that are safe for this placement. Do not exceed 10 pounds per acre of N+K2O+S in moist soil. Check with a local CCA or Extension agronomist so you don’t exceed rates in your area. For example, rates will be lower in dry soils.

In-furrow placement at planting gives opportunity to include plant growth regulators in the fertilizer. In areas with lots of manure and resultant high phosphorus soils, you can benefit from the starter effect in seed-furrow placement of liquid nitrogen fertilizer when necessary precautions are followed.

The dribbled or banded fertilizer can be dry granular or liquid. It should be placed close enough to influence the corn plant at the V3 to V4 growth stage (within 2 to 3 inches). Rates for the dry granular dribbled over the row or the band at the 2-inch placement beside the row should not exceed 70 pounds per acre of N+K2O. The rate may need to be lower in the drier areas of Western corn-growing regions.

Surface application works great in no-till when guidelines are followed.

1. Phosphorus-limited soils will require placing a phosphorus-containing fertilizer into the soil so corn roots can get to the phosphorus this year. Surface-applied phosphorus, due to its slow movement in the soil, will not benefit this year’s crop. It will be available to future corn crops. If you are doing maintenance applications of phosphorus, surface application with high-residue management works great.
2. When surface-applying liquid nitrogen fertilizer (UAN) alone or in combination with other fertilizer ingredients, be sure to stabilize the nitrogen with a urease inhibitor to stop surface volatilization of ammonia, such as Agrotain; or use a combination urease inhibitor/nitrification inhibitor such as Agrotain Plus. The inclusion of a nitrification inhibitor will greatly slow the conversion of ammonium to nitrate by soil microbes. This will reduce nitrate leaching. Because the nitrogen stays in the ammonium form longer, less nitrate is available to be denitrified and lost as nitrous oxide under saturated soil conditions. Agrotain Plus provides three-way nitrogen protection.

Be sure to credit the nutrients in your starter fertilizer program toward your total nutrients required for the crop. We are looking at the effectiveness of dribbling dry granular fertilizer over the row at planting to suppress slug feeding. So far, ammonium sulfate and muriate of potash are providing the best protection in our test trials.

The use of fertilizer to suppress slug feeding on the corn crop must be done within the guidelines of your nutrient management plan. There are minimum rates for slug suppression and maximum rates for corn crop safety.

Use two-placement starter fertilizer for high-yielding no-till corn. Tillage warms the soil and oxidizes nutrients, making them crop available too early. By using two-placement starter fertilizer — and plant growth regulators — in no-till, we even the playing field for good early growth until the soil warms to release nutrients when the corn crop needs them. And remember, we will still have good soil moisture when they (the tillers) have gone dry.

Greetings from a soggy Iowa. Our snow cover is basically gone now, with the exception of drifts and piles, and we are anxiously awaiting some fieldwork. We have a couple of new exciting additions this spring.

The first is a new employee. My brother, Brandt, will be joining the farm next week. He has had a desire to join the operation and now seems to be a good time to get him up to speed. The extra help will be greatly appreciated.

The second is the purchase of a Gold Digger tile plow. We know that one of our major limiting factors in yield and profitability is drainage. There were two main reasons driving this purchase. One is the availability of tiling contractors; the other is the cost of tile to our landlords.

Being able to tile on our own schedule and exactly where and how we want it done will be a major advantage. We will also be able to offer land improvement to landlords at a lower cost than hiring it out. This will not only benefit them with the added value to their farms, but it will help us by getting everything that we know good drainage accomplishes.

Like everyone, we are getting equipment ready for the spring season. Planters will be in the shop soon, some fertilizer still needs to be spread and we have about a day and a half of strip-till left. Of course, there is the tiling we want to get started on with no end to the list of “wet spots” to start with.

Good luck to all this spring and please remember to stay safe.

Hello everyone from the winter doldrums of central Indiana.

Hard to believe that it’s March 1, because it just seems like yesterday that I finished harvest. Actually, is was practically yesterday and now we’re frantically planning our planting schedule. But first, our family is heading to the warm sunshine of Florida this week for a little R & R. Hopefully I can bring some of that sunshine home with me.

Since harvest, we have taken delivery of a new 1790 John Deere split row soybean planter that we traded for last summer. We had the same model planter the last 4 years, but with some wear and tear on the previous one, we felt we needed to update to a new one.

The new planter will be set up differently than the old one with options that have been released the last few years.

We attended the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville a few weeks ago. This is an annual event that our farm operation attends on a regular basis because we can actually see and discuss directly with the developers of the latest in farm equipment under one (well, several because this show is huge)
roof.

You also see some very interesting people like our own Darrell Bruggink, who I ran into at the show this year. Even writers like to check out the latest and greatest in farming.

We had an idea of what changes we wanted to make ahead of time, but attending the show, we made a few minor changes that we were not planning originally. I would like to share how our new soybean planter will be set up.

The biggest change is that our new planter will not have any liquid on it like our previous one did. We use to apply a bio-stimulant with a micronutrient package in furrow with the old one. We feel that we are getting good biological activity in our soils where it is not as critical to have this product applied as in the past.

What I am concerned about is the glyphosate issue that is starting to blow up in our industry. Read the March issue of No-Till Farmer. I heard about this initially at the National N0-Tillage Conference  and it is something we must pay attention to. This might be the beginning of the end of Roundup soybeans and corn.

Adding micro-nutrients to the soil with a post foliar application 7 to 10 days after application of glyphosate will be our option if needed. We are going to have a Liberty Link soybean plot out this year to seriously consider getting away from the
Roundup Ready technology.

Another major change to our new planter is that we are adding the Precision Planting AirForce system with the 20/20 seed monitor. We had this on our corn planter last year and felt that this is a must on all planters in the future.

With variation in our soil types, the seed depth is consistently at the right depth with adjustment of the down pressure with air while we are planting. The 20/20 monitor told me on my corn planter the adjustments that needed to be made that my GS2 Deere monitor did not.

I am very impressed with this system and feel that money spent on the precision monitor and AirForce is money made.

With the AirForce system, it’s not recommended to have the reduced inner-diameter gauge wheels like we had on our previous soybean planter. This was hard for me to swallow last year with my corn planter, but it really makes sense not to have them.

Sometimes, we have very minor down pressure, and with our soil being so mellow which we attribute to our no-tilled practices, having the RID gauge wheels would have been a detrimental to planting.

Lastly, we are putting on the Dawn XR Curvetine closing wheels. We previously had the Martin spaders with drag chains, but with the new Dawns, the drag chain is not recommended. We did not like the drag chains on our soybean planter, but like them on our corn planter.

We struggled with the Martins in closing the slot with our annual rye grass cover crop. Hopefully, with the new design of the Dawn’s, we will correct that problem. Monitoring these wheels this year will give us something to consider in the
future for my corn planter.

Another recommendation from the owner himself that designed the Dawn Curvetines is that you don’t want the Keeton seed firmers. This one I am really struggling with. I understand the reasoning of why, but I have always had a seed firmer on my planters ever since they were designed. I will keep you informed in the future how this works out.

I would have loved to add the E-Set units with the BullsEye seed tubes, but I can’t see the return on investment. Maybe next year when I get a few acres on my Deere units, but since they are new now, the cost was too pricey. If this was a corn planter, I would have pulled the trigger, but for soybeans, I will wait.

If any of you have had any experience with what I plan on doing, please e-mail me back. I feel that experience that what other no-till farmers have done is the best education that we can have to improve our bottom line. Keep me and others informed and have a great March.

Got to go pack my summer clothes!