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Driftless SW Wisconsin | Combine and grain cart axle loads can easily approach 50,000 lb on one axle.
By comparison, the axle load limits on 10" of concrete on an interstate highway is usually 20,000 lb.
If you drove a vehicle with combine or grain cart axle loads on the interstate highways they would put you in jail! Yet we routinely drive back and forth across our fields with this type of loads, more than twice legal highway loads, and then wonder why we have "compaction" problems. I have heard researchers say, depending on soil type and moisture, the compaction caused by a grain cart can extend to near 30" deep!
You wouldn't drive your pickup back and forth over your wife's kitchen vegetable garden each fall, why would we drive these types of loads where we want to plant our source of income "garden" next spring??
Some passes such as the combine are unavoidable. A couple ways to minimize the compaction caused by the combine is to run ON the just harvested corn stalks. Leaving them tall they push over rather than into a tire. You can also use a "stalks stomper" or just hang a piece of heavy pipe or rail from the bottom of the corn head in front of the combine tires to get stalks leaning away from the tire. Usually however just leaving them long helps enormously.
In a continuous corn situation, as the original poster asked about, strip till will move over 15" every year, back and forth. Next year's crop will be planted BETWEEN this year's stalks as shown in the pictures I posted above. Then we want to minimize the harvest tire traffic between the rows and space the combine tires to run ON the just-harvested rows. Next year's strip tilled crop preparation starts under the feeder house of the combine in the fall.
One of the benefits of ridge till was the controlled traffic. Strip till has the potential to keep some of that controlled traffic benefit, since it is easy to identify where the old row was. Strip till overcomes many of the drawbacks of ridge till in many operations.
Another very real thing which can be done to reduce compaction, regardless of your tillage system, is to plan out your harvest traffic patterns ahead of time. Keep the grain carts out of the field as much as possible. I cringe when I see a combine and a 2/3 full grain cart going side by side thru the field....
If you have to have a grain cart in the field, have him drive ON the old stalks also. And/or plan unloading lanes...And don't tell me it can't be done because I have seen it done successfully. I know I am swimming upstream on this topic but as a former combine engineer that is my 2 cents.
Jim at Dawn | |
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- Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - Stacy : 8/21/2006 10:21
- RE: Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - Jim : 8/21/2006 11:03
- Re: Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - boog : 8/21/2006 12:39
- RE: Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - JDPlowboy : 8/21/2006 13:00
- RE: Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - Cliff SEIA : 8/21/2006 13:34
- So was the Simpsons, M Thomas!! NT - agboy : 8/21/2006 19:34
- RE: Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - 4020dt : 8/22/2006 23:08
- What? - agboy : 8/23/2006 23:16
- Re: Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue - Millhouse : 8/22/2006 23:18
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Corn after corn,, getting rid of residue
