Next up, we’re headed to Wood Lake, Minn., where no-tiller David Stelter tries to keep all his acres covered year-round. To help make it happen, he built a piece of equipment to interseed corn at V6. Let’s check it out. 

“A neighbor of mine and myself designed this planter for intereseding V6 corn here in Minnesota. I got the idea from a gentleman named Brady Wolfe by Benson, Minn. They did theirs on 40-inch rows, we did this on 30’s. Trying to get some soil movement when we planted instead of just dropping the seed on top of the soil. We get enough soil movement from these rotary tines from the rotary hoe to mix the soil and seed up a little bit. And of course, the rain does wonders.” 

“What happens is this thing will meter out the seed, it will blow it out into these deflectors, and the deflectors will deflect the seed in the 30-inch row and the rotors churn the soil and you pray for rain. When you get timely rain soon after you do it, germination will take place in 3-5 days. But you don’t always get it. Some years you have to wait for the rain to come. If the ground isn’t completely flat, the seed has some particles to attach to. The two seasons we’ve used it now; we’ve had what I consider good results. We did find that you can’t use a PRE on your soils.”

David had cover crops on almost 100% of his 750 acres a decade ago, but since then, he’s fought mud each fall, making it difficult to get covers established in some areas. 

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.