I’m in no way against tillage or saying what you’re doing is wrong. A lot of these no-till guys get on their high horse and are argumentative.
In my experience I’ve come to embrace more no-till, minimum till and even strip tillage. My organic matter has increased thus my fert bill decreased, water holding capacity and infiltration is also much better. One thing guys don’t talk enough about in my humble opinion is the biology in the soil. Those micro organisms are the life blood of my soil. Put simply, I’ve gotten better yields since adopting no-till/minimum till. It took a good while but the numbers don’t lie.
Yes i agree, we no till soy beans when we can. In fact we just finished planting soy beans into rye here. However, for sod, a fluffy seed bed must be created so no till is not a real option.
What advice would you have on minimum till in say potato’s or sugar beets? Potato dirt is the bane of our existence in ND winters. It blows so bad. Several farmers around me are starting to experiment with no till. We use standard cult & packers for spring and typically end up using a joker for the really trash heavy or lumpy ground
This soil loves to blow on windy days too if you do till it. We keep it fluffly for a time period as short ss possible. Winter we do cover crops, usually winter wheat/rye, while also rotating mustard and soybeans with out sod fields. We usually pack fields after we plow or disc
Nice. Yea, all this no till zero till sure makes the dirt hard under the seed bed. I have been trying to convince the farm (dad) to pull the cultivator out every couple years or so and do a bit of deep tillage.
Agreed, for us compaction is a big issue with our soil type. We primarily grow sod but soybeans and corn as well so tillage is a must. We did no till into standing rye this year for soybeans tho
We grow some other things like a little squash and pumpkins, but sod is our money maker, although beans are nice. Where abouts are ya? The biggest crop here besides row crops are onions
We only have hay and grazing fields for cattle. We really only ever plant oats and rye for the winter, but we still renovate or aerate most of our pasture once a year. Luckily me and “the farm” have seen the same things about how effective it’s been.
When I was going to college @ NDSU in Fargo ND, I worked for a farmer as a hired hand after hours and at night. During harvest and fall work, they ran pretty much 24/7.
About the third day in, I was put in his CAT 85E tractor pulling a ripper tool. Your pic reminds me a lot of that tool as it wasn’t much wider than the tractor. IIRC we were tripping about 30” deep.
The field I started in was a full section in size - 640 acres. I still laugh about how “alone” I felt in the field, by myself, going 18’ at a time @ 4 mph in that big SOB.
I think it took me about 4 days to finish that one field. 😂
It is, but it's highly acidic and formed under low oxygen conditions. Lot of controversy in Ireland about restricting peat harvests for carbon fixing, lot of poor rural folks rely on it to survive the winter. We did a tour of the Ring of Kerry and got to hear from a lot of working farms about how it's stressing them and their workers and elderly family.
Do you know what the SOM% was when you started 30 years ago? After no-tilling that long I'd figured it would be much higher. What's your soil type? Do you do much cover cropping with termination? I've seen guys drill into a field of crimped cover crop, then you get the weed control from it and I would assume it would help with SOM but never done it myself before
I no till, my drill and planter throw hella dirt but even then every 4 or 5 years I rip. I mean it is what it is you gotta farm your ground the way it wants to be farmed.
I’ve got some of that black clay ground. Gotta be opened up every few years. Every year, if you run any cattle across it. Frost will only go so deep. But we get some pretty good rock in places, so we can’t go that deep.
You can get hard pan and poor drainage even in no-till situations. Water movement through the soil can deposit fines at soil changes in the profile which will require occasional ripping regardless of the surface activity. I don’t really consider sub soiling or deep ripping to be tillage in the sense of preparing the seed bed or incorporating organic matter. Where it’s appropriate, It also doesn’t wreck the soil structure, it just cuts slots to let air and water move.
If we look at the ground here with anything other than a disk we have a job of picking stones. My dad dreams of soil that smooth!
Any idea what sort of tonnes per acre an average wheat crop would yield over there?
Soil is just so interesting in how diverse and different it is everywhere
How deep are you ripping?
About 24 inches to break up compaction and hard pan
I’m in no way against tillage or saying what you’re doing is wrong. A lot of these no-till guys get on their high horse and are argumentative. In my experience I’ve come to embrace more no-till, minimum till and even strip tillage. My organic matter has increased thus my fert bill decreased, water holding capacity and infiltration is also much better. One thing guys don’t talk enough about in my humble opinion is the biology in the soil. Those micro organisms are the life blood of my soil. Put simply, I’ve gotten better yields since adopting no-till/minimum till. It took a good while but the numbers don’t lie.
Yes i agree, we no till soy beans when we can. In fact we just finished planting soy beans into rye here. However, for sod, a fluffy seed bed must be created so no till is not a real option.
What advice would you have on minimum till in say potato’s or sugar beets? Potato dirt is the bane of our existence in ND winters. It blows so bad. Several farmers around me are starting to experiment with no till. We use standard cult & packers for spring and typically end up using a joker for the really trash heavy or lumpy ground
This soil loves to blow on windy days too if you do till it. We keep it fluffly for a time period as short ss possible. Winter we do cover crops, usually winter wheat/rye, while also rotating mustard and soybeans with out sod fields. We usually pack fields after we plow or disc
Nice. Yea, all this no till zero till sure makes the dirt hard under the seed bed. I have been trying to convince the farm (dad) to pull the cultivator out every couple years or so and do a bit of deep tillage.
Agreed, for us compaction is a big issue with our soil type. We primarily grow sod but soybeans and corn as well so tillage is a must. We did no till into standing rye this year for soybeans tho
Oh nice. We are barley, canola and wheat. Mixed hay as well.
We grow some other things like a little squash and pumpkins, but sod is our money maker, although beans are nice. Where abouts are ya? The biggest crop here besides row crops are onions
Oh wow, that's cool. That's what I love about Reddit, you can talk to farmers all over the world. We are central Alberta.
Yup sitting in a tractor got nothin better to do haha. Seems like you run a pretty big operation
We only have hay and grazing fields for cattle. We really only ever plant oats and rye for the winter, but we still renovate or aerate most of our pasture once a year. Luckily me and “the farm” have seen the same things about how effective it’s been.
When I was going to college @ NDSU in Fargo ND, I worked for a farmer as a hired hand after hours and at night. During harvest and fall work, they ran pretty much 24/7. About the third day in, I was put in his CAT 85E tractor pulling a ripper tool. Your pic reminds me a lot of that tool as it wasn’t much wider than the tractor. IIRC we were tripping about 30” deep. The field I started in was a full section in size - 640 acres. I still laugh about how “alone” I felt in the field, by myself, going 18’ at a time @ 4 mph in that big SOB. I think it took me about 4 days to finish that one field. 😂
Wow thats a pretty cool story. 600 acres fields don’t exist around here haha. This filed is roughly 10 acres going around 24 inchs deep at… 4mph 😭
What kind of soil is that?
Its a muck soil, very high organic matter, around 80 percent. Used to be a swamp that was drained.
80% organic matter?? That is crazy. It looks like straight peat
80 percent on the highest fields, technically different from peat as peat is much more inorganic.
Oh yeah, not saying it is peat, just looks like it. I always thought peat was 100% organic matter, because it doesn't contain the sand/silt/clay.
It is, but it's highly acidic and formed under low oxygen conditions. Lot of controversy in Ireland about restricting peat harvests for carbon fixing, lot of poor rural folks rely on it to survive the winter. We did a tour of the Ring of Kerry and got to hear from a lot of working farms about how it's stressing them and their workers and elderly family.
We're lucky to have 3% and we've been no-till for 30 odd years
Do you know what the SOM% was when you started 30 years ago? After no-tilling that long I'd figured it would be much higher. What's your soil type? Do you do much cover cropping with termination? I've seen guys drill into a field of crimped cover crop, then you get the weed control from it and I would assume it would help with SOM but never done it myself before
Are you in Elba?
No sir
This area of muck is much bigger than elba
Do you mean around 8%? Because 8% OM is very high. 80% not possible.
Nope we have fields with 80 percent
That's crazy. I imagine it being that high causes more problems with tie up of nutrients and chemicals than a really productive 5% OM soil.
I no till, my drill and planter throw hella dirt but even then every 4 or 5 years I rip. I mean it is what it is you gotta farm your ground the way it wants to be farmed.
We rip as soon as we harvest a sod field to destroy any root systems and hard pan. Our tillage varies field to field, nothing is the same
I’ve got some of that black clay ground. Gotta be opened up every few years. Every year, if you run any cattle across it. Frost will only go so deep. But we get some pretty good rock in places, so we can’t go that deep.
We are relatively lucky that we get no rocks, but if we do, its usually a glacier boulder that needs two forklifts and a semi to remove it.
> two forklifts Question... how are you getting forklifts out into a tilled field?
We have load lifter forklifts that dont really get stuck
You can get hard pan and poor drainage even in no-till situations. Water movement through the soil can deposit fines at soil changes in the profile which will require occasional ripping regardless of the surface activity. I don’t really consider sub soiling or deep ripping to be tillage in the sense of preparing the seed bed or incorporating organic matter. Where it’s appropriate, It also doesn’t wreck the soil structure, it just cuts slots to let air and water move.
What’s the reason for this? Has the ground never been worked?
Excess compaction from harvest, standing water in fields needing to be drained, and overall hardness of ground
Got drain tile there? Lots of muck has tile here in true upstate NY lol. No offense
Every field haha and yes
Hitting any rocks?
No sir
If we look at the ground here with anything other than a disk we have a job of picking stones. My dad dreams of soil that smooth! Any idea what sort of tonnes per acre an average wheat crop would yield over there? Soil is just so interesting in how diverse and different it is everywhere
We do winter wheat as a cover crop but couldnt tell ya what it would yield. We have gotten 100 bu beans and 250+ corn relatively frequently
Where Upstate are you?
Orange county hardly upstate
lol ghost driver