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Walnut Grove MN USA | Yes everything you want to do is possible but lets put a description on a couple of things. Striptil in my opinion generally works the top 6maybe 8 inches of soil and usually clears residue out of the way in preperation for planting. Can be done in fall or spring and may or may not include fertilizer. Zone till is done in the fall and is below they 6-8 inch depth, in my case down to 20 inches. Sometimes includes fertilizer but not usually. Takes big HP, 50-75 per shank and slow going. Not usually able to plant after a zone till operation unless RTK guidance has been used(I tried it without RTK, not good). So what would work for you? Are you using RTK guidance? If yes that opens up some options for you, if not then we need your planter size, based on your mulch tiller size I going to guess 16 row. For best results you should match strip till machine size to planter size,RTK will allow other combo's. So you got enough hp to pull a 16 row shank unit at 6 mph? If running 12-13 inches I doubt it unless you are running one of the biggest dogs out there.
Rocks. Are you going to windrow the rocks? somewhat. Any shank unit is going to pull them out and move them around. Around here thats what kids and ATV's and little rock wagons are for after school gets out. A coulter type unit will leave them in the ground but that also means the planter is going to hit them. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
My experience with strip till is I started out with a homemade shank unit running in the fall putting down fertilizer. Come spring I had a problem, Most areas of the field were ready but some low areas were still a little damp. Damp enough to plug the planter. Some areas of some fields the color of the strip and the color of the residue would "flip-flop" and at night I would be lost and rows running everywhere except were they should be. Next I bought a Brillion zone commander to work out the compaction I had. Bought the closing coulters, rolling baskets and markers and figured on putting fertilzer down deep. Baskets came off after about 30 acres cuz it was a little damp. Pulled really hard because my air cart was behind the ripper running in soft ground, pulled out some really big rocks. Next spring I intended to plant right into those strips. It was a wet spring and I still had the planter problem along with the fact that I can't drive the ripper straight enough to make a 4 shank ripper match up to a 12 row planter so it was planting into the side of the berm or into the top of it or inbetween the berms and usually all at the same time. Also trying to stay in the area between the zones is like balancing on a knife edge when it is wet. Fall off that edge and it is 18-20 inches down to the bottom. After that I decided I needed to make a spring trip to try dry out the ground so the planter would work better but wanted to continue with the ripper. I bought a Dawn Pluribus unit to use in the fall to lay out my strips to follow with the ripper since the Toolbar the Pluribus units were on had markers and matched the planter. That worked well especially in corn stalks. Come spring I again runn the Pluribus unit applying fertilzer and preping the strips. Worked well where I didn't rip but not as well where I did rip, ground was just to soft and unlevel to do a good job. It was also another damp spring so I had some trouble with the Pluribus but if I could get thru it the planter could run half an hour behind and work perfectly. As of today I am going to build a shank type unit for fall use to apply fertilizer because it will remove some compaction then in the spring make a quick trip with the Pluribus unit to dry out the strips and maybe apply some fert and broadcast some herbicide then plant ( Ireserve the right to change my mind at any given moment and probably will many times). Strip till can work but it isn't the cure-all and anybody doing it has made mistakes but that is how you learn. | |
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Looking to go to strip till
