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WC MN | I consider our 1000 bu grain cart with 1250's a form of tillage, tread mashes stalks into ground for faster decomposition and makes available to worms sooner. Been crazy wet all summer would be a great time to be seeding nightcrawlers (tho getting kinda warm for that) worms will do all the compaction busting you need. It's all about residue management you have to accept slower early growth in exchange for not having clay hills erode further. Compaction claims are just an excuse to sell tillage tools.
Forget about compaction, if you can master cover crops your golden, easy to say hard to execute. Row cleaners and Delta Force with a closing system that works will give you something to spend money on vs tillage tools. If you have a VT machine spread rye ahead of it or put an air box on it for corn stalks, it doesn't have to come up in the fall to look good in the spring then burn down with Sharpen or LV4/dicamba, plant beans then kill rye when it starts to get dry. Personally having notilled for a long time it is hard to get excited about extra work of cover crops but realize that is just a poor excuse.
After you notill a field go rake off residue on a 5 or 10 foot square, you will have same early growth as a tillage field, no compaction busting required. Earthworms and nightcrawlers love this clay so just make sure your leaving some food, residue, for them. Good luck!! | |
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Soybean Corn rotation w/ cover crops
