Our corn planted on April 25th is at V14 and has 2 leaves to emerge before the tassel is out. Typically it takes about 3 days in temperatures like this for a new leaf to emerge so we will likely have tassels out by next Sunday to take pics of. Hopefully there are silks out at the same time. One of the problems with drought stress around pollination is the uneven emergence of silks matching up with pollen shed. If the 2 don't allign, you can have big problems. Despite the heat, the corn looks phenomenal so far. Green from top to bottom and very few signs of disease or nutrient deficiencies. I did find one plant last week that may have had the start of Goss's Wilt developing on the farm that suffered so much wind damage earlier. Not much of a surprise.
The good news is that after digging a few corn root masses, it looks like we have very little rootworm pressure on our conventional corn and a very dense fibrous root system established in the zones. I'd venture to say we have more fine root hairs than what I'm used to seeing from our conventional tillage days. We still have some soybean residue left between the rows in our first year corn but much of it is gone. I don't know how much of an advantage we have from a moisture preservation standpoint. When I dig in the strip, the ground comes up very easily and seperates well. When I dig between the rows where no tillage has been done it's a different story...big hard chunks of compacted soil. Seeing how compacted the soil is in between the rows in both our corn and soybeans has got me re-thinking my approach to not doing any tillage besides my fall stripping...especially with our corn stalk residue. When soils are that compacted between the rows, oxygen becomes depleted and residue breakdown is slowed to a crawl. If we don't break the residue down well over the summer months, we will have more residue to contend with next fall and next spring going back to corn. I've been visiting with my friend Sheldon Stevermer about this over the last week and we've been kicking around some ideas in how to possibly address this without doing too much damage to the soil structure we're trying to establish and maintain. Over time in the strip till system, the compacted layers should be marginalized by the increased soil life and biology that promotes natural aereation and porosity. It's obvious by this video we have a few years to go before we're there.
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| Residue mat holding moisture |
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| Compacted soil between the rows |
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| Loose soil under the zone |
Our soybeans are the biggest that they've ever been going into the fourth of July holiday but it seems that they are lagging behind the neighbors that are using conventional tillage. They look uniform and even but just not as bushy and impressive as fields that were tilled. I'm thinking that there are several reasons for why we're seeing these differences:
1. Lack of oxygen in the soil system from less tillage and compacted soil between the rows
2. Root masses running into high salt load from my aggressive fertilizer program last fall
3. Poor varietal placement on my part on one field
I will say after walking and doing some digging last night that the mat of cornstalk residue is definately retaining more moisture than tilled fields I've dug in. I was able to find enough moisture to ball up soil underneath the mat which was encouraging. Hopefully this translates into an advantage if things stay dry. Weed control is fantastic with the exception of some volunteer corn that clumps that may come back with any moisture we receive. I can find no waterhemp to speak of emerging after our post-emerge treatments completed a week ago.
Overall, our crops have never looked so good before the 4th of July. This isn't a function of strip till as everyone's crops in my area look the best they ever have in my opinion despite the tillage system. This is however probably the most scared I've been about the amount of potential that could be lost if we don't get a rain in the next 10 days. We will go from 250 bu/A corn potential to 150 bu/A or less pretty quick if things stay dry through July. With new crop corn at $6/bu, that's a huge revenue swing in the balance. I feel fortunate though as we still have a chance while others in Illinois, Indiana and the SE cornbelt are already toasted and discing corn under. When you dig and see how dry our soils are right now, we're not that far away from the same issues.
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Enjoy the 4th holiday!
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