While participants in corn yield contests often try a few yield-boosting ideas that wouldn’t always prove to be profitable across their entire acreage, they also use some ideas that may work in your own no-tilled fields.

Check these practical no-till tips, tricks and techniques from these national no-till and strip-till winners in the 2006 National Corn Growers Association contest:

• Tim Bishop, Queenstown, Md., 279.1 bushels per acre.
• Steve and Darrell Buckley, Dimmit, Texas, 311.0 bushels per acre.
• Matthew Cox, Scott City, Mo., 269.9 bushels per acre.
• Kip Cullers, Purdy, Mo., 347.2 bushels per acre.
• Jeff and Darrell Doub, East Bend, N.C., 268.9 bushels per acre.
• Jeff Mezera, Bagley, Wis., 295.9 bushels per acre
• Bob and Russell Schwenke, Union, Ky., 274.0 bushels per acre.

1. High yields are built a few bushels at a time. Every year, try one or two new things to see if you can produce a few more bushels. When you put a few new things together and get a little help from the weather, you’ll likely end up with higher yields.

—Jeff Mezera

2. At silking time, 3 ounces per acre of Capture insecticide was flown on. A week before the crop tasseled, 9 ounces per acre of Headline fungicide was flown on.

—Kip Cullers

3. We use an 8-row Kinze 3500 no-till planter equipped with Martin row cleaners to sweep away crop residue while spiked closing wheels lift the furrow to keep from compacting the row and to improve seedling emergence. Precision Planting’s calibrated seed…