April 28th, 2012-Hitting the Strip

We got started planting corn on Wednesday about noon as field conditions had dried out fairly well from the couple inches of rain we received last weekend.  I took off a few hours from work to go to the field to help Dad get started.  We started on an 80 of corn on corn where we had about 15 acres of strips and the rest of the field had been plowed.  We started all the monitors up and dropped the planter and took off for the first time planting with RTK.  Dad commented that it was the first time in his 38 years of farming that he went to the field and dropped the planter and everything worked!  That's saying something since we have more things going on in the cab than ever before.  Here's a pic of the monitor bank:

Outback S3 Autosteer monitor on upper left, then AMVAC Smartbox monitor middle top, Kinze Planter monitor bottom middle and Ag Leader Insight on the right.  Out of sight on the planter is our Redball manifold for our starter system monitoring. 

We started on the corn on corn strips first and it worked fantastic as we had no problem lining up and staying right on top of the strips with the RTK.  The trash whippers cleaned off the little bit of remaining residue that was left and we planted into probably the cleanest and consistent seed bed of corn on corn we ever have including our black plowing. My Dad has been supportive but pretty concerned how this was going to all work out this spring but it was pretty satisfying to see this expression on his face the first round of planting on strips.  We both were pretty relieved that everything had come together and was working.  We planted the 15 acres of strips and then transitioned into the plowing where the the mellowness of the ground gave Dad some fits with getting the autosteer adjusted to play nice with the ground conditions.  He said the strips were much easier to hold the line on. 

 

This field didn't have much for weeds coming other than a few scattered dandelions so we'll probably come back after it dries up with on herbicide program with a little burndown kick.  This field is going to be conventional corn and we're planning on using a full rate of Corvus and Atrazine with a some Roundup for the few weeds that are up sprayed pre-emerge. 

The most decorative piece on our planting ensemble is my Dad's prized 3 point mounted Walsh tank from 1975 which carries our starter fertilizer.  Spotting a tank of this vintage and character in the corn belt today is something akin to spotting the Sasquatch.  Sometimes folks stop and on take pictures.  Long live the lime green Walsh.

We continued on to plant a few more farms of both plowing and stripped bean stubble and I can say for sure that from a planting standpoint, both Dad and I are sold on how much happier we are with the seed bed we're planting into with the strips.  There are no zones of compaction from field cultivator tracks angling across the field...every row is just as mellow as the next all the way across the field.  Now it's just a matter of getting some heat and popping this stuff up.  We've got another day and a half left of planting corn and putting in our Roundup and conventional corn plots and then on to soybeans.  I'm hoping to do my inter crop planting sometime this next week as well and will likely plant the corn and the beans at the same time.  I'll try to take plenty of pics and maybe some video of doing that.  Here's to a good week!

Now's the time on Sprockets when we DANCE!

April 21st, 2012

I celebrated 4/20 by heading out first thing with the backhoe and pulled some trees on fence lines and fixed some tile while it rained lightly.  I like working in the rain and having a coffee mug that looks like it was in a demo derby.  Mud and coffee mix on the lip of the mug with treeless fence lines = satisfaction.

When I finished those tasks, I moved on to my next project...putting the custom made planter sprockets on our little 6 row planter for my experiment with strip inter-cropping.

So this past winter I went to the Conservation Tillage Conference in Rochester, MN and saw Bob Recker speak about strip inter cropping and the possible yield increases when the practice is highly managed.  I decided that it would be fun to put some of his ideas to work and see what happens this year. 

Strip inter cropping is nothing new.  For those that don't know, strip inter cropping is the practice of having alternating strips of 2 or more different crops every other 15-30 ft across a field.  In my situation I'm interested in growing a 6 row strip of corn next to a 6 row strip of soybeans.  The reason for doing this is increased light interception on the outside rows of corn and the yield response that can come from this.  What I'm attempting to do is increase the population and fertility of those outside rows to match the increased light input and see if we can ring the bell on yield.

My plan is to plant 6 row strips of corn where the outside 2 rows on each side of the planter drop roughly 44,000 seeds/A, the next inside rows on the right and left side 2 drop about 39,000 seeds/A and the middle 2 rows of strip at a typical drop of 35,000 seeds/A.  Since most corn planters are setup to plant the same population across the full width of the planter, a little MacGuyvering was needed to make my idea happen.  I had to speed up the seed meters outside to in to achieve this and did so by having some custom sprockets machined with the help of my strip till confidant, Sheldon Stevermer, and B&D Metalworks of Wells, MN.  John Deere 7000 planters have standard meter sprockets that have 19 teeth on them so I had them make me a pair of 15 tooth and a pair of 17 tooth sprockets.  The smaller size will speed up the outside rows proportionally to our standard setting on the middle two rows that will have a normal 19 tooth sprocket. 

I installed the custom sprockets yesterday and hope to test them early this week to see what kind of a drop we're achieving.  My plan is to drive about 3.5 MPH when planting so that the seed meters don't spontaneously combust on the outside rows.  Doing this on a 30 year old planter will likely present some challenges so we'll see how it goes.  With the change in the weather pattern going from famine to feast now, I think we'll have plenty of time to get things dialed in. 

I'll be putting my strip inter crop trial on strip tilled corn stalks from last fall.  I commend my Dad for having the courage to let me go against everything he's ever done in conventional farming by strip inter cropping into strip tilled corn stalks.  This dose of stripping squared would cause most farmers to short circuit and curl up with a blanket underneath a moldboard plow.  We're only doing it on 6 acres but I appreciate my Dad giving me the chance to have some fun and hopefully learn some things.  More posts to come on this.

Hopefully it drys out this week and we get some corn in the ground.  The forecast doesn't look too promising.

The Cold Wet Comes-April 14th, 2012

It rained. Finally. The moisture overnight wasn't much but we'll take it and hope that more comes in the next 4-5 days. We have chosen not to plant and wait for moisture and for the calendar to get a little closer to May to hopefully have warmer temperatures . Others have started this week putting corn so we'll see what the right decision is in a few weeks. Flip a coin.

Dad and I have all our prep work for the most part done. I did a little strip till for my employer this week on some strips from last fall that we were going to put some plots in on and we wanted to freshen them and clean trash off some of the rows. It will be interesting to watch the differences off where we freshened vs not and I'll try to take some pics of the differences as the season wears on.

I checked my burndown from April 2nd and it looks like things worked well as there was a clear line sprayed vs unsprayed along the fencelines. The rest of the fields have quite a bit of lambsquarter and other weeds getting up to 1" tall.

Sunday is for Strippers

I spent Sunday afternoon spraying our fencelines with 24D and some FirstRate to knock down some the giant ragweed, dandelions and lambsquarter that were starting to grow pretty well. I used the sprayer on my mini-truck that we built last year which works really well. It has a 15 ft boom with 20" nozzle spacing with a 40 gallon Schaben tank. I have it calibrated to spray about 15 GPA at 5 MPH. The mini-truck speedometer is in km/hr and doesn't estimate low speed very well so I downloaded an app for my Iphone that works as a speedometer and used it for the first time Sunday and it worked really well. Came out about nuts on for product usage for the area I sprayed. We'll see what kind of control we go back to the farm next weekend. It was a little cool to be spraying so it will likely take longer to see the results we're hoping for.

After finishing that job I took off to go finish doing my spring strip till freshening. I had a farm last fall where I lost my RTK GPS signal off and on for the last 20 acres of the field and my strips were not straight enough pass to pass for Dad to come in and plant with a 12 row planter across the strips made by my 6 row strip till bar. So I went out and found where the problem started, got lined up again and got things straight so Dad won't have issues when he pulls into the field in a few weeks. The strips worked up amazingly well for this time of year and I'll be interested to see the differences of where I did the spring strips vs where I did only a pass in the fall.

After I finished that field, I headed to Dad's 6 acre patch around his place to re-strip that piece where I'm hoping to make my first attempt at strip intercropping corn and soybeans. More details on this intercrop venture in the weeks to come. Good weekend...back to the grind and my real job for the week!

April 1, 2012

Spring is off to a fast start already as Dad and I have completed a lot of preliminary field work before planting will start in the next 2 weeks. We've been able to level our plowing and apply anhydrous ammonia this last week in really good conditions. Hopefully this will be the last spring that we have to level plowing as we're in the process of transitioning the operation to strip tillage. We plowed a majority of our acres going back to corn on corn last fall and strip tilled all of our bean stubble going to corn as well as corn stubble going to soybeans. We do have one corn on corn farm where we will compare the plowing vs strip till that I'm really anxious to see how it works out. I was able to get out and freshen my fall strips on that particular farm on Thursday night as the ground conditions were unbelievably fit for the end of March in northern Iowa. Here's a few pics of how things looked. I was running a 6-row Krause Gladiator about 6 inches deep about 6 MPH making these strips. This diabolical numerical alignment is nothing more than an interesting coincidence.

Here's a link to my YouTube page of some video I shot on my iPhone while stripping. Forgive my inability to hold the phone in the correct orientation. I failed to take my Steve Jobs pills before heading to the field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esA8RdxvfTU&context=C4b9e535ADvjVQa1PpcFM17BBGSyznffE8bprB8QwfXk9H3l2C6C4=

Going to head out later today to spray some field borders on some of our strip tilled fields where we have giant ragweed and grass coming much earlier than normal and I don't want to let them get out of hand before planting. I'll have some pics of the mini-truck in action later on making this application that will sure to be the envy of everyone who owns a 120 ft self propelled sprayer in the corn belt.