|
Driftless SW Wisconsin | We have noticed the same thing here in N ILL recently - weedy fields. It doesn't seem to matter whether they were conventional or no till.
We have two of our strip till customers in Minnesota who I have worked with recently who seemed to have good weed control in strip till for different reasons.
One uses a twin row system where he plants twin rows of corn about 7 or 8" apart on our 8-10" wide strips. he said he uses twin rows for the reason of limiting his spraying to one post trip. He feels the two twin rows, with corn plants about 15" theoretical in-row spacing, produces more of a complete canopy and eliminates the need for a second spray pass.
Another customer who is planting 30" corn rows on our strips uses a post spray mix right behind the planter of Roundup + Harness Xtra, a residual corn herbicide. The roundup gets any remaining between-strip weeds while the harness has an excellent, often moist cleared strip to work on. The harness does not land on residue as it does in a no till system, hoping to get a rain and wash off into the soil. The cleared strip can be a weed control advantage.
Seems hard to make a profit with 3 spray passes.
Both of these customers seem to have excellent weed control with one-pass post programs.
Jim at Dawn
I'll attach a couple before and after photos of the twin row customer's field so you can get a feel for the sheer volume of residue. We have added a kit to our Pluribus strip till system where we replace our Trashwheels with very sharp 18" spherical discs in this type of condition. However the fall strips in the second photo are being made with our standard Trashwheels.
In this volume of residue, I believe this customer will be switching his row units to our Dawn Vision bar where the row units are staggered and we have the hydraulic down pressure system standard. Both are a big help in this magnitude of corn residue.
Personally I think we will be seeing much more of this in the future.
The 30" customer's 24 R strip till with 24 r 30 planter with one pass of RU + residual is another less extreme probably more generally applicable system that (usually) gives good weed control with one pass.
Edited by Jim 8/7/2006 16:03
 (MN Twin Row Corn 11-03-05 Hat Prior to Dawn Strip Till.JPG)
 (DAWN STRIP TILL MN TWIN ROW CORN IMG1633 110505.jpg)
Attachments
----------------
 MN Twin Row Corn 11-03-05 Hat Prior to Dawn Strip Till.JPG (71KB - 284 downloads)
DAWN STRIP TILL MN TWIN ROW CORN IMG1633 110505.jpg (80KB - 375 downloads)
| |
|
To spray or not to spray????
