There is a lot of wisdom on this forum. I have become very intrigued in the advantages of using tram lines in wheat. Anybody on this forum doing it? We are looking at two to four spray trips and one to two top dressing fertilizer trips on wheat down here.

The wheat on the edge of the wheel track looks at run over wheat in the wheel track like a weed, and the run over wheat makes nothing. The wheat next to the tram line however, according to advocates, compensates for the skip through increased yield on those plants. There are other advantages to controlled traffic, like operator efficiency.

If you are doing it, how do you make it work? Do you stop up rows on the drill? If so, do you stop them up every pass or just the tram line pass? How do you do that, with a solenoid, manual plate of some kind, or some other method?  How do you make these "different" drill widths match sprayer widths?

How about "killing" the tram line with a nozzle spraying over the wheel track? Does that work better? When do you kill it? We may need an aphid insectide application in December, and I was considering a second inexpensive spray tank with electric pump and dedicated nozzles behind the tires on that trip.  I even thought about rigging up an ATV with a tank, short boom, and light bar....

What about erosion? Our soils are indeed erodable, and does anybody see any increase in erosion in the tram lines? I could see it being just as bad, but probably no worse than a pivot track. Perhaps we need to limit tram lines to flatter fields without terraces....

These are just some ideas and questions I have as I go out advising growers. I'd hate to push them to doing any practice that could be counter productive. Remember, this is south Georgia! We have good farmers and good soils, but, like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, this isn't "Kansas anymore" or the plains.

Ideas, comments, advice, PLEASE?