No-Till Farmer Blog

Ohio and Indiana have been hit hard and often with rain this growing season. Many fields have just been planted in the last week or two, some remain unplanted and prevented planting is being taken on many fields.

At my office we have received more than 17 inches of rain since April 22, and had 27 days with measurable rain in that 67-day period. That’s leading to tough conditions to get a crop planted properly, and then a rough road for those crops that are in the ground.

An observation from this spring is that no-till corn fields that were planted and have good soil balance are in much better condition than the conventionally tilled fields. The exceptions are those fields that contain a high level of magnesium in relationship to calcium. Those fields don’t have the soil structure and internal drainage of fields where the farmer has paid attention to the calcium and magnesium levels and has applied lime.

The tilled fields also have been hit harder by excess water. Precious soil aggregates were destroyed in the tillage process, and many times a layer was put in the soil that inhibits the movement of water and air.

We have been so wet for so long that many of these fields have gone anaerobic, such as the one in the photo. With poor soil structure, there are no air pockets and channels for the soil life to hide and survive.

We have noticed the hair roots disappearing in these fields. Without those tiny roots, the plant can’t take up nutrients. Farmers are looking at foliar feeding these stressed fields — if they can get dry enough to apply — but I have little faith that will change anything. The real problem is with the roots and the poor soil condition.

The calcium-magnesium relationship that has been well-managed shines in a year like this. Soil microbial populations are much higher under no-till with good soil balance, and can handle longer periods of water stress and recover quickly. The soils where magnesium hinders water infiltration (soils with clay content) lose microbial populations fast and recover extremely slow.

All these organisms are important for nutrient uptake in the plant and development of new plant tissue. They are the key to successfully handling weather stress. No-till fields that are well-balanced with nutrients, as well as calcium and magnesium, provide a great environment for soil microbes and that optimum “live” soil. They are definitely more profitable to farm and can relieve a lot of “farmer stress” in weather patterns like we are experiencing this year.

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.

Wow, what a difference one year can be. Corn and soybeans got planted by early May of this year compared to just finishing in early June of last year. Plenty of moisture and heat lately compared to cool and somewhat dry at this time last year.

Crops are off and running so field work that needs to be done is a race to finish. I guess that the changes we have to make to confront those challenges tests our patience and knowledge.

Right now, I still have 300 acres of corn to sidedress and have not even started to spray my post application of Roundup. Fortunately, I applied 80 pounds of nitrogen with the planter and we have a residual herbicide on our soybeans.

Last year, we purchased a Blu-Jet 4010 28% applicator because we felt that our sidedress nitrogen was not as efficient as we would like it to be with anhydrous. We are getting a great deal of release of nitrogen from our soil with the biology sources working now since we have been no-tilling for a long period of time.  The sidedress application of nitrogen is now more evenly distributed and we don’t have the compaction of the anhydrous tank that we use to pull.

Also, since the corn is growing so fast, the concern of breaking off the corn with the low profile NH3 tank is less of a concern than we would have had to contend with in the past. I have always been able to get the sidedressing done without laying any corn down since I have been
farming. This year may be a challenge, though, because of the constant heavy rains we have been receiving lately. One neighbor who sidedresses with NH3 has already thrown the towel in on 200 acres because of the tallness of the corn. Time and Mother Nature will tell me in the next 2 weeks.

I also wanted to update you on the Dawn trashwheels and Curvetine closing wheels I put on my soybean planter this year. We had so much residue to deal with this spring, so we added the single residue managers on our JD 1790 15-inch soybean planter. The residue managers did a good job in not hairpinning the trash in the seed trench. The ease of adjustment made it nice because field conditions would change if the residue was somewhat damp.

The closing wheels really shined where we had our annual ryegrass.  The wheels would crush the sidewalls in without compacting the trench. I have had issues with my spaders in my cover crops in not closing the seed trench. The perfect stand that I constantly strive for have been challenging with the spaders especially with annual ryegrass.

If I was going to put a cover crop on all of our corn acres, I would probably switch my Martin Spaders over to the Dawn Curvetines on the corn planter, but for now I am sticking with the Martin’s with the drag chain. The time may come in the future where I would change if I trade planters for a new one.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that we put the Precision Air Force system on our soybean planter like we have on our corn planter. This is an option that I highly recommend for any planter. The depth placement of the seed is so critical for that even stand and, with the help of this system, it makes planting that much more precise.

Got to get ready for the Indiana Crop Management Field Day that is happening at our farm on the 24th. With the rain delaying our field work, I am thankful that we have long days at this time to get things done. The last I checked was that we now have 186 RSVPs for lunch. If any of you are interested in coming, here’s a Web site you can visit.

Hope to see you then. I would like to hear if any of you have cocktail mixes or ideas for keeping our soybeans from not shutting down for a period of time after spraying glyphosate. It is information from other innovative farmers like you that make farming more enjoyable.

Have a fantastic growing season. 2010 is off to a great start!

Here on our farm, we have been blessed with some pretty good weather — except for the May 9 frost and ensuing cold snap. Crops were planted in very good soil conditions and are progressing rapidly. The tallest corn is probably to my shoulders and we had soybeans flowering on June 14.

The last week to 10 days, however, have been a little trying with the rain showers we have been getting. Fortunately, we have missed out on some of the bigger rains (some nearby locations have had 4-to-5-inch rainfall events), but we have had steady rain for the last 5 days of around 1/2 inch per day, including yesterday.

This morning, I went out to look at some fields that we are spraying for a neighbor who conventionally tills. No way could I have sprayed there without making a terrible mess, so I moved on to our no-tilled beans. Still a little sticky on top, but firm.

I sprayed the better part of the day today before we get hit with another week of forecast high winds and daily rain. Meanwhile, the conventional-till guys stayed in the shed or made a mess of their fields. This is a normal thing to happen here.

In general, in the spring, we are a day or two ahead because we can get on the dirt. When it’s time to spray, we go because we have to and we can. Harvest time? No problems.

The moral of the story is, we get more done and utilize our time and equipment more efficiently because of the no-till system. We keep with it and it gets better every year.

Who’d have thought entering the month of June — being more than 3.5 inches below normal precipitation for the year — that in 6 short days we would recover to normal. However, receiving that much rainfall in a short time frame brings an old nemesis into full view.

The often-ignored specter of ephemeral gully erosion rears its ugly head any time there is an overabundance of rainfall. Ephemeral gullies are those flow areas in the mini-watersheds of fields that erode every time there is a runoff event.

They disappear every spring when tillage is performed and reappear again with the first rainfall event that the field soil profile cannot infiltrate and hold. The flow areas wash out as deep as the tillage was performed, and you can usually see the marks from the disc blades in the gully bottom.

I think that this “disappearing act” that occurs with ephemeral gullies is a big part of the reason why farmers don’t show as much concern for them. Spring tillage erases the gully; they reappear with the first hard rainfall. The growing crop canopy then soon “hides” the newly formed gully and at harvesttime the crop residue spread behind the combine “disguises” the problem once again.

The use of cover crops to enhance residue cover in the field after harvest of soybeans or any low-residue crop will go a long way toward reducing the ephemeral gully problem. Anything that minimizes raindrop impact on bare soils and increases water infiltration within the watershed of a field will mitigate the damage that excessive runoff does to flow areas.

The best treatment for ephemeral gullies is a grassed waterway, and there are attractive CRP programs that pay well for entering flow areas into those them. Grassed waterways can be hard to manage with the advent of field sprayers with 120-foot-wide spray booms and custom applicators that aren’t always the most concerned with avoiding the application of herbicides and fertilizers on waterways.

If you are not going to use grassed waterways as your method of addressing the flow areas in the field, it’s imperative that you follow up the annual or biannual reshaping of those areas with vegetative cover. My suggestion is using cereal rye, as it germinates readily, grows aggressively and provides a good stabilizing sod in the flow area.

Take the time to shape and seed those areas in the fall as soon after harvest as possible to give the rye optimal time to establish during this typically lower rainfall time frame.

The continuous no-till systems being applied on an ever-increasing amount of acres nationwide have cut sheet and rill erosion by up to 90%. It’s this 10% we don’t control that eventually leads to an ephemeral gully that impedes planting and field traffic after a few years.

We have experienced for a long time what tilling flow areas and ephemeral gullies provides for results. It’s time to step up our management to the next level and address this problem.

This year has been a real head-scratcher. Many well-laid plans went to scrap. The main thing that worked for us was the planter modifications. It has saved our behind and kept us ahead of the pack. Still, we have troubles.

No matter how we got our nitrogen down, we have yellow-striped corn everywhere. It looks green but pale from the road. When you walk into the field, you see the striped leaves. The best thing you can do is run tissue samples and learn.

My tissue samples say that I’m low in nitrogen, sulfur and magnesium, even though it’s there. It won’t flow right and the roots can’t get to it in waterlogged and changing soil temperatures. Some soil temperatures are just too cool to achieve anything near perfect growth.

Corn growth varies from emerged to 10 true leaves. It’s all over the board. Many early planted fields are stunted and some of the later plantings will beat them.

Still, we have good crop potential; however, it’s no bin-buster at this point. The tile and drainage problems reared their ugly heads.  Typical comment across the Midwest is, “I never saw water there before,” or “I never saw water that high at that place.”

I  have been playing with Bill Northcutt’s tool correlating between NEXRAD centroid rain recordings and my gauges. They are pretty close, but a few readings are off one way or the other. Most farms in southern Ohio recorded 4 to 8 inches of rainfall in May, which is causing substantial variation and thus the problems.

My LibertyLink soybeans look good, but we had to use a lot of surfactant on the tall weeds and it yellowed the leaves. Most plants have 8 to 10 leaves, a trifoliate or two and stage V1 to V2. Most soybeans have just emerged or have just been planted around here and many are not finished. I added insecticide for early bean leaf beetles, which are common in these parts.

The Ohio Soybean Association has a new yield and quality contest I hope to enter. I need to compare my yield and quality. My best field broke 80 bushels per acre in 2006 — the best soybeans I ever raised. That same field made 245-bushel-per-acre corn in 2004, which was the best corn I ever raised. Those bars will stand this year, I think.

The wheat crop is going to the handbasket with the heat and disease and the outbreak of cereal leaf beetle.  The weather and $4 wheat didn’t offer much opportunity to correct the problems. Still, I tissue test every flag-leafed field to get a handle on past, present and future issues.

I am sure this sounds familiar to most of you and I wish you and all of us the best.