There was a thread the other day here about corn residue management stressing chopping shredding, etc stalks that mostly leaves the residue on the soil surface.

I did a strip till demo of Joe's latest 2007 Pluribus updates and the high speed kit in SW MN Twin Row corn the other day.

This customer did what we often suggest in that he harvested the stalks up high with conventional cast iron stalks rolls and left them standing and intact as possible. In fact these were about the tallest stalks I have ever strip tilled into. Also they were leaning in the direction the combine had pushed them and we strip tilled both with the lean and into the lean.

The results however of leaving most of the plant material in the air is that we were able to make some very nice fall strips in this very heavy soil SW MN area.

We do recommend running in corn stalks in the spring however in this MN area it is probably a good idea to blacken a strip in the fall if nature gives us a chance. Several of our customers have come up with there own system of running in heavy stalks in the fall even shallow (because of tire track compaction, grain carts etc) just to break up the surface and maybe put down some K or P.

Then they run the Pluribus again in the spring deeper to freshen/blacken the strips after the winter and maybe put down a portion or all of their N at that time, just ahead of the planter also. The over wintering of the blackened tire tracks make stripping easier in the spring.

Note we do not require this two step process in corn stalks but in some areas it may make sense. For reference, in bean stubble we are tend more to make fall strips (on level ground only) right down the top of the just harvest bean row as the most mellow place in the field. This tends to produce very uniform, mellow strips.

Here are some photos of the other end of the spectrum in "corn residue management" - minimum effort made to work stalks. We were able run here at 7-8 mph or as fast as the operator could manually hold the tractor on the stalks.

Jim at Dawn

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IMGA0580_DAWN_FALL_STRIPTILL_INTO_TALL_TWIN_ROW_CORNSTALKS_SWMN_11-07-07 .JPG (91KB - 189 downloads)

IMGA0576_DAWN_FALL_STRIPTILL_INTO_TALL_TWIN_ROW_CORNSTALKS_SWMN_11-07-07 .JPG (95KB - 181 downloads)

IMGA0565_DAWN_FALL_STRIPTILL_INTO_TALL_TWIN_ROW_CORNSTALKS_SWMN_11-07-07 .JPG (85KB - 160 downloads)