2013 Mistakes Addressed

The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.  Change is a necessary evil of progress and 2013 taught me some tough lessons about strip till that I wanted to share and elaborate on what I'm doing to address those challenges for 2014.

Nitrogen Management

Last year we had nearly 75% of our corn acres in Corn on Corn and our nitrogen management plan was to have about 60 units of N between my fall dry AMS and MAP, starter and 0x2 placement of UAN and ATS and then follow with the remaining 100-120 units with side dressed UAN and ATS.  The thought behind this plan was that we would limit the early spring losses and apply the heavy load of N right when the corn plant was taking off on its exponential growth curve between V5 and V8.  It sounded good last winter when we were making our plans.  Then after planting we received about a foot of rain with cold temperatures which made timely side dressing nearly impossible with the exception of our pattern tiled ground.  The farms that we couldn't side dress because of the wet and cold conditions likely lost some of the surface applied N to excess runoff and looked nitrogen deficient.  The farms that we had pattern tiled we were able to side dress around V4 and received a rain immediately after which helped move the nitrogen to the root zone and we raised very good corn on corn on those farms.  

The farms that remained wet we had to wait til nearly V8 before they were dry enough to get across.  To complicate things further, once we were able to side dress, we didn't receive another rain to move the nitrogen to the roots for about 2 weeks.  The corn stood still with a crappy yellow color until that next rain came along.  It was too late as the yield potential had been set in a nitrogen deficient status and those farms were significantly less in yield than the farms we had applied nitrogen at the critical time.  We knew this specifically as one farm we had pulled in and tried to side dress through the mud in about 3 different rounds in various spots of the field to try to find a dry spot to work.  You could see the difference in those 3 strips in the field the rest of the year as they were greener and taller.  When we combined it, we could tell to the row where those strips were as the weight on the grain cart and yield monitor shot up about 20 bu/A.  It was all about timing and availability in 2013.   

So how do I fix it?  Well my thought is that I'm going to increase my at planting nitrogen application by 2X and consider options to apply it into the soil rather than dribble it on to the surface.  Benefits to this would be to limit nitrogen losses due to volatilization and surface runoff in the event of a heavy rain like I had last year. Disadvantages include that I am still subject to leaching losses with a more significant portion applied up front however this could be overcome by using nitrification inhibitors like Instinct.  

The problem with injecting fertilizer with a coulter on the planter has always been the risk of compacting the seed trench in wet conditions.  My Dad has warned me about issues he used to have in the 80's trying to do 2x2 placements with his dry starter in front of the disc openers.  For that reason, I want the coulter injection system to be behind my gauge wheels to limit the risk of pulling up wet sticky soil that would potentially build up on the gauge wheels.  I found a system online here that I'm inquiring about that I think will do what I'm looking for.  The system is a double coulter split injection about 3" away from the middle of the seed furrow.  It was invented by a farmer out in Illinois named Jeff Garman.  Here's a pic of it of what it looks like.

There will still be a risk of sidewall smearing but that could be mitigated by utilizing spaded closing wheels as shown in the photo in wet conditions which is something that I've been wanting to add to the planter as well. 

Hopefully if I can can implement these changes I can safe guard the nitrogen shortfalls I had last season early from cold wet soils in my corn on corn strip till. I'll follow up this application with a side dressed application to finish out my nitrogen program hopefully again during that V4-V8 window with less pressure of getting the N on at that point.  My end game is to try to get to a point where I have a nitrogen management system that limits and balances both environmental and economic losses of this key input within my cropping system.

More to come next week of things I'm considering changing as the snow melts and planting season draws near.  Cheers.

PS-I wanted to share a Ted Talk I watched this week that discussed the value of carbon retention within soils and how that plays into the discussion around controlling global CO2 with smarter agriculture systems. Really enjoyed it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgmssrVInP0

2014 Planting Season is 8 Weeks Away!!!

It's been a long while since my last post as I had dropped the blog after the craziness of the 2013 consumed me with trying to rectify a bad cropping year riddled with stress and the unknown.  I will pontificate in future posts about some of the struggles and things I learned about from 2013. Thankfully, things worked out and we were able to emerge well from the damage of the spring floods with the help of our crop insurance and are excited to start a new year in 2014.  Eternal optimism is a job requirement in farming!

Some other big changes have occurred with our operation as well as my parents decided to retire and make 2013 their last year in farming.  My wife and I have decided to begin the process of taking over the operation while I continue to work full time.  2014 will be a busy time but I'm excited about the challenge and ready for things to warm up so we can get to work.

I've been wanting to get back into the blog business to share my experiences with strip-till and other farming practices that I'm interested in for a while now but have had a case of the winter blahs that limited my motivation to do so.  That changed this past week when I attended the Conservation Tillage Conference in St. Cloud, Mn with a couple other of my strip-tiller confidants.  The CTC is something I've been attending for the last 4 years and is a great gathering for farmers who are interested primarily in strip till or no till farming practices in the upper Midwest.  It's a 2-day conference that features keynote speakers on big picture topics, smaller breakout sessions focusing on more specialized topics within conservation tillage, and the infamous Beer and Bull session where we fill our bellies with hors d'oeuvres and drink a few kegs of beer while discussing earthworms, mycorrhizae, organic matter, cover crops and carbon sinks.  I usually am pretty intelligent by 10:30 PM on those nights...just ask me.  The University of Minnesota has been organizing this conference and it's one of the most enjoyable meetings I go to throughout the year filled with lots of really talented, prosperous and thoughtful producers who aren't afraid to get outside the box of conventional farming practices.

I came away with a lot of energy and enthusiasm from the conference and have some things I'd like to incorporate more into my operation for 2014.  Here's a listing and description of some of those things:

1.  Tile.  No matter what your operation's tillage practices are, tile is huge asset that helps overcome production risk.  I learned last year that strip-tilled ground doesn't shed water like tilled ground does....it soaks it up like a sponge.  When you get 12 inches of rain in 10 days like I did last spring and you don't have a way to drain the sponge, you are going to get spanked.  My Dad has done a great job giving me a leg up by investing heavily in tiling his land the last 5 seasons but we're not 100% tiled yet. In that spirit, I am going to set yearly tiling goals for his farms that are not fully tiled.  This sentiment was spurred by the first session of the conference centered around climate change/shift spoken to by Mark Seely, U of MN State Climatologist.  We were told to get ready to weather proof our crops from more of both drought and floods in the future as climate change is here without a doubt.  Mark cited several different climatic trends that have veered drastically over the last 25 years from the previous century of patterns. Temperatures will continue to rise along with dew points and the intensity and frequency of severe weather events will continue to increase.  I feel that if I'm going to be successful at dealing with these types of weather extremes, I need to continue to reduce tillage and tile as much as possible early in my career to limit exposure to drought and flooding.

2.  Cover crops.  Last season with we chose to take prevent planting on one farm that we were unable to plant timely from the wet weather.  Dad chose to pattern tile a good share of the farm in early July and then we established a 6-way cover crop that I strip tilled into this fall.  This was the first time we had ever used a cover crop and we really like what we saw and want to know more about using them more often in the future.  The CTC was full of breakout sessions that talked about the benefits of feeding soil microbes after the crop has reached senescence with cover crops.  There were several producers who shared stories of how they've have raised organic matter levels significantly over a 10 year period and been able to reduce their commercial fertilizer use by utilizing cover crops in their cropping system every year...not just in situations of prevent plant.  This interests me greatly...especially  in a $4 corn market. In our climate, it's difficult to wait until after harvest to establish a cover crop so I'm going to pursue some different application timings and specific species to perhaps establish cover crops in the middle of the summer so that by harvest, I have a carpet of vegetation that is ready to thrive with the increased sunlight up until freeze up.  This carpet will help minimize erosion as well as take up any unused nitrogen or other available nutrients and hold them until the following year.  There are several programs through the NRCS office that help offset the cost of trying cover crops and I plan to take advantage of them this year to figure out how to utilize them more efficiently within my system.

3.  Erosion control.  The last session I attended at the CTC from a presentation by Dave Franzen who is a research scientist from NDSU.  Dave very effectively laid out the problem that American agriculture will face in the next 50 years....trying to feed the world on a diminishing resource, our topsoil.  We've lost nearly 1/2 of the prairies original top soil to different forms of erosion in the last 100 years.  He posed the question to the audience of what will we do in another 100 years if we continue to do little to address the issue while the severity of flooding and wind events increase?  As I drove home from St Cloud and saw field after field of full width tillage and saw how much soil has been transferred off of fields by the wind and deposited in ditches just this winter alone, I wonder if we will be able to change enough quick enough to limit our long term losses?  I guess I don't want my legacy to my grandchildren to be that I had this information and chose to continue to farm in a manner that limited their ability to grow food 50 years from now.  I don't think any farmer has that attitude or intent to do otherwise, we just need more of us to make production decisions with consideration for that perspective. I hope to be more of a resource to those growers who are interested in that way of thinking in the future.

These were the big take homes for me from the 2014 Conservation Tillage Conference.  I highly encourage anyone who's considering getting into reduced tillage farming practices to attend next winter.  I know it gave me some great ideas for changing my operation for the better and I'm excited to put those concepts to work here hopefully in the next 8-10 weeks as planting season rolls around.

I plan to update the blog at least on a weekly basis so please check back in and I will try not to take anymore 9 month hiatuses.  Next week, I'll discuss some of the biggest lessons I learned in 2013 and what I'm doing to address them.  Cheers!

Who's Down with Old PP?

Another week of wet weather has occurred and very little field activity has happened in our area. After the rainfall last Tuesday, you could hear the disappointment and discouragement in people's voices that our window of opportunity is coming to an end.  The forecast continues to offer not much hope as the next week has rain chances about every 3 days.  Our fields would need anywhere from 3-6 days of sunshine and wind before they would be fit to plant decently at this point.  It's just one of those years.

I settled last Monday with my insurance adjuster on my sad excuse of a corn field and am hoping that I can get a chance to try to replant some beans and get somewhat of a 2nd crop off the farm.  If I can't plant beans by the 4th of July, I'll likely seed some form of a cover crop on my acres where the corn never grew in the first place.  Never thought coming out of a drought that I'd be talking about crop insurance settlements and cover crops the next season.

We are considering taking prevented planting on our last field that hasn't been planted as the economics look better there than trying to grow corn or beans planted after the 20th of June which is looking like a reality now.  Our plan will be to hopefully seed a cover crop mix in July if it dries out and do some tiling to improve our situation the next time we get wet weather like this.  Our cover crop will have annual ryegrass along with several other nitrogen fixing legumes species that should help scavenge and retain nutrients as well as fix more nitrogen for the 2014 crop.  Dad has an old 20' Tye drill that we used to drill beans with 15 years ago on 13" spacing.  I've been hounding him to scrap out for the last 5 years but I'm glad that his stubbornness to let go held strong as we might have a good opportunity to make hay with that old orange thing yet this year on all these prevented planting acres that  need a cover crop seeded!  We drug it out of the shed and are going to go through it this week to get it functional.   If we get in the field soon enough to plant soybeans our farms we need to tear up, we'll likely drill the beans instead of plant them in attempt to get canopy closure for weed control purposes in the potential short season ahead.

Our other corn on corn fields around Buffalo Center look very good considering the weather.  Stands remain good and over the weekend I thought the color improved as well with the little bit of sun we received on Sunday.  I was able to get out and take some pictures last week of some of the stands.  Compared to other fields of corn on corn in the neighborhood, I don't think we're lagging behind yet despite of the cool wet conditions.  If we can get strip tilled corn on corn to look like this in cold wet spring, I like our chances long term if we ever get back to a normal season.  Hopefully we can get started side dressing these fields if the weather allows as they are drier than our problem farms and have more tile.  These farms still have excellent potential assuming we can get heat for the remainder of the season.

Every year I do something a little bit different to try to have some fun and learn with growing corn a little bit differently than conventional wisdom would advise.  Last year many of you know, I dabbled in strip inter-cropping corn and soybeans and learned a lot in the process of doing so about what is possible with high populations of corn that are managed intensely with inputs and have more access to light and air movement.  The downside of inter-cropping is that it poses a number of operational and logistical challenges that make adopting it on a wide scale basis somewhat prohibitive.  My fellow strip-till enthusiast friend Sheldon Stevermer and I were discussing what we saw with my intercrop last year and he had the idea of trying to get the benefit of the "outside row effect" with intercropping across the whole field without the hassle of intercropping.  His ideas was to plant twin rows at high populations on 60" spacings so that you could still get more light exposure up and down the plant with the wider row spacing along with the greater air movement.  I thought it was a great idea and decided to give it a try this year.  I planted the experiment in my front yard  where I have about 3/4 of an acre that I had strip tilled the field and applied dry fertilizer last fall to.  In order to get the twin row 60" spacing, I shut off every other row on our planter and simply planted the field twice but on the second pass, I shifted over 8" and planted the twin row.  I maxed out the sprocket combination for population on the planter at 44,000 seeds/A and so we have each row in our twin row at that rate.  It was difficult to try to get lined up and offset the second row by 8" just by eye balling it but I got it close enough where I think we'll accomplish what we're after.

I sprayed herbicide on this patch last night and will follow up here in a week or so with some top dress applications of 32% and sulfur which I will try to direct toward the base of the twinrows to increase uptake.  One other idea I may flirt with is hand seeding some legumes as a cover crop in between the twinrows as well to keep weeds down and fix some nitrogen as well.  It's going to be fun to see if we can replicate the benefits increasing light interception and air movement and achieve some big yields trying this out.  So far we're off to a good start.  In a crappy year, you've got to have something to be optimistic or excited about and this is my little slice of fun for 2013.  More to come later on this experiment.

The Deluge Carries On

The rain has continued to fall over the last 7 days on and off again and our saturation status stays the same.  More heavy rain is forecast tonight and tomorrow and a brief respite possibly over the weekend with another storm system forecast to impact us by next Tuesday.  It doesn't look for prospects of much more corn or soybeans getting planted in Winnebago County until after the 10th of June at this point in my opinion.

Our fields around Buffalo Center have all emerged and look good considering they are all corn on corn and have endured this much moisture over the course of the last 10 days.  Stands appear to be fairly even an I'm pleased with how our planter and trash whippers handled the challenge of planting into corn on corn.  We had one farm that Dad decided to move the trash whippers up as he was worried we were moving too much dirt and getting wet dirt sticking to the planter wheels.  I was pretty concerned that he had left too much trash on the strips but even that farm looks relatively good considering the lack of heat  and sunshine that the crops have had while they've emerged over the last week.  I chose to set the whippers back down when I took over planting and from the road it seems to have made a positive difference.  We were able to get our pre-emerge burndown on all those farms and that appears to have worked well as we have virtually nothing coming for weeds yet.  We've had plenty of moisture to activate our Verdict so we should have smooth sailing on those fields for few weeks before we need to come in and spray again and do some side dressing.

Our farms east of Thompson are a completely different story.  They've probably received 4-6 inches more rain over the last 12 days than our farms around Buffalo Center.  The erosion problems in the strips get worse with every rainfall event.  We met with the crop insurance adjuster on my farm on Saturday morning to see about replanting and he didn't get out of his pickup to make the decision that he would cover a replant on the whole farm if necessary.  His exact words were as he rolled down the window, "boy you sure got a mess here."  All I could do was laugh.  After he left I walked around the farm in the rain for a while to try to get a handle on the flatter ground how the corn was coming up and there wasn't much there.

I'm working this week to understand my crop insurance options in regards to letting that field stand as is and having to look at a complete train wreck for the rest of the summer or tear it up and plant it to beans by the time it dries up hopefully in mid-June.  It's not a fun solution either way.

I went to the field again last night to try to ascertain how much stand loss I may have and I can honestly say I have never seen such widespread un-emerged corn in a field from over-saturation.  I have 5-10% at most of the field that has emerged.  Where it has emerged, it looks awesome.  The other 90-95% of the farm has nothing other than seeds sitting in muck.  Some of the seeds have sprouted, some of them have not.  The seeds are all still firm and don't look like they are rotting yet but with the wet forecast I don't have much faith that they will make it with how saturated it is.  Other than my neighbor to the north who planted ahead of the snow, everyone else who planted the same day around me has terrible stands of emerged corn as well.  It will be really interesting to see how that area between Forest City and Thompson comes out of this deal as there is a huge swath of acres that look terrible right now.  Here are some pics and videos that I shot last night that somewhat capture what things look like.  With the forecast being what it is I don't expect things to change much over the next week.  Serenity now... Pabst Blue Ribbon later.

What 90% of the farm looks like-no emergence

Small streak of what the field would like without rain over a tile line-only about 15 ft wide

My field after nearly 12" of rain in 11 days.  An inch a day keeps the corn away.

Neighbor's field right next door who planted before 12" of snow.  Apply salt directly to wound.

8 inch trowel in the eroded slot.  TWSS

Corn seed growing on the surface in eroded strip

Erosion dumped on headland

A Slice of Humble Pie Chased With 6 Inches of Rain

It's been an interesting week.  We started planting corn last Saturday and were able to finish up Thursday night right before the rain.  I'll have more details in another post about my thoughts on how planting went.  Today's post is about the ramifications of what happened when my farm received nearly 5 inches of rain in a few hours last Friday morning when it had just been planted 18 hours before.  The result was not good.

I woke up last Friday morning feeling great that I had got the corn in before the rain came.  I had about 3 inches at our house so I got up early and drove around to look at some of Dad's farms and they all looked good with minimal water standing.  I went to work assuming that our farms over east of Thompson fared just fine as well until I heard on the radio on the way to work that areas between Thompson and Forest City had received 4-5 inches of rain.  I called Dad and asked him to go look at those farms on his way to State Track in Des Moines that day and when he called me to report in all he said was, "its not good."

My 80 of corn had eroded terribly from the heavy rain to the point where the water washed out my planted strips along with the seed on several hillsides.  The wind mill road that goes across the farm had water run across so violently that it washed the rock out into the field about 150 feet.  I have several acres underwater from ponding as well.   Over the course of the weekend received almost another 2 inches of rain and more washing and ponding has occurred.  It is a mess.  I just got back from looking at it now for the 2nd time and it's pretty disheartening.

Here's some photos of what things look like from the damage.

Erosion going over my fence line

Corn seed with no dirt and coleoptile shoot emerged

Hillside with eroded strips

Strip eroded to the point the seed is washed away down the hill

The remnants of my end rows that now resemble an alluvial fan

Windmill road rock washed out on to the field

This is a difficult situation to try to figure out what the right decision is for how to proceed.  There are several things working against me with the wet forecast and time being the 2 biggest factors at this point.  I also have corn rows that are completely washed away, corn that is shallow planted from the topsoil eroding off, corn submerged by water, corn buried by 12" of sediment in places, corn buried by 6" of rock, an EQUIP contract that states I can't perform full width tillage to try to smooth out the eroded ruts in the field, I've likely lost my nitrogen and sulfur I applied to the surface of the field with the planter,  I have no pre-emerge herbicide applied to the field and the herbicide I have purchased can't be applied on emerged corn and I have corn that is now emerged.  All in all, mother nature has me by the short hairs and pulling me in close to feel the burn.

As of today my plan is to wait until Thursday as I think the corn should be up by then and evaluate just how bad of stand I have and then try to formulate a plan from there assuming that the weather cooperates...unfortunately there is another major storm system scheduled for next weekend making any plans of reclamation likely a moot point.  The good news is that I have Federal Crop Insurance purchased which helps mitigate the financial risk I'm exposed to.  The bad news is that I don't farm for receiving Federal Crop payouts; I farm to grow things and sell a product and right now this setback is about as deflating to my mental status and farming pride as it gets.

I'm not alone...I have lots of neighbors with ponds in that area and severe erosion.  It does seem though that the strip till system was impacted worse in having rows washed away than conventionally tilled fields did. While my field likely had less total erosion come off of it, the erosion energy that did occur was focused down the loose strips instead of across the entire field surface.

I don't know that I'm in a position to say I've learned anything yet as it's likely to early to discern much out of the crap hole I've found myself in, but I do have a few ideas of what may have elevated the problems I currently have.  I'll try to share them when I see things play out over the next few weeks.  Until then...best of luck to all those impacted by the wet conditions and stay safe!

Holes in the ground

I went out to check fields last night to see if we were getting any closer to planting and found my favorite tiler  hanging out underneath a corn cob.  It's really satisfying to walk out and see the amount of worm holes in our fields.  All these holes serve as natural drainage and air ducts into the soil system that can help dry things out quicker when you're caught in a wet spring like this one.

Our strips look to be in really good shape and although in between the rows it is still pretty wet underneath the residue, the soil in the strip is extremely mellow with tons of air space and is much drier.  If we wanted to push it we could be planting especially on our tiled fields.  My employer actually planted a field 2 nights ago(5 days after 10" of snow) that was fall strip till on pattern tile when no one else around could go.  It was a little mucky underneath but as long as they kept the planter on the strips and not in between the strips, it worked pretty good.  I think that we are setup for an advantage where we will just be going out and planting rather than working the ground when it is marginally wet.  Time will tell.

The weather forecast looks good for the next 6 days so I'm hopeful that we can get rolling by this weekend and be going in good conditions and not pushing it too much.  My guess is that my wife's Mother's Day brunch might have to be at about 5 AM if things are fit to be planting on Sunday.  Tis the season.

Getting That Cold Wet Spring I Had Wished For

It looks pretty likely that my last post will get a pretty good test for the spring of 2013.  Our farms early last week were ready to plant but we held back from putting seed in the ground as we were afraid of a cold snap and maybe a few inches of snow that were forecast.  Well the forecast was wrong and we got nearly a foot of snow in Winnebago County between May 1-May 2nd.  As I type this morning we still have roughly 4-6" of snow to melt off the fields before we can start drying out and working towards getting back in the field.  I was very close to pulling the trigger and planting last Sunday and Monday as our strips we're in great shape but am really glad we were conservative and didn't roll.  With the very poor cold germ scores of the seed corn this year, I'm glad it's still in the bag and not in the wet ground this morning at 38 degrees.  It will be really interesting to see how the corn that did get planted in my neighborhood will emerge through this stress.

Instead of planting last weekend, we took time to take the planter out and test out the systems to make sure the new additions to the planter along with the existing systems were working well so that when we do go the field we can hit the ground running.  We've added new Yetter Floating Shark Tooth row cleaners as well as 0x2 placement tubes for applying 28% and ATS behind our closing wheels and drag chains to level the furrow and cover our liquid product.

I'm glad we tested things because we had issues with about every system.  Our RTK system wasn't working, our trash whippers were plowing way too much dirt, our starter pump wasn't pumping and our Raven controller that controls our 28% wasn't functioning either.  Thankfully as we went through each problem there was a relatively easy fix for each of them and by late in the afternoon we pretty much we're ready to plant corn.  That's one of the downfalls of what we're doing is that there is a lot of systems on one pass across the field to manage and keep operating well.  You have to have patience and be able to adapt when you get thrown a monkey wrench.

Here's some pictures of our activities from last Sunday.

I'm excited for the challenge that is going to come in the next few weeks trying to get the 2013 crop in and putting our strip till to the test in a wet season.  From what I saw of the condition of our strips last weekend and how well they were drying out, I'm encouraged.  Hopefully by next weekend the weather will have straightened out and we can get some things done.  It's not panic time yet but seeing a picture like this on May 2nd at your house makes a guy a little bit itchy.  

If you're looking for some interesting videos to watch while the snow melts, here's some good ones that I've enjoyed from Clay Mitchell, Ray Archuletta and Matt Helmers at Iowa State that talk about the benefits of reducing tillage and paying attention to soil health.

Clay Mitchell lecture at ISU

Clay Mitchell at Chicago Ideas Week

Matt Helmers ISU Rainfall Simulator

Ray Archuletta Slake Test on Soil