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

"What are you going to do in a wet year?"

This is the question that I get the most from skeptics of strip till in my conversations with folks this winter.  Honestly "I don't know" I guess has to be my answer for now since I haven't had one.  My assumptions based off my observations made this spring the few times that it was actually wet are that I like my chances.

My favorite response to that question to a conventional tillage farmer is "What are YOU going to do in a wet year?".  

Drag a field cultivator through wet soils to dry out the top few inches and put a smear pan an inch underneath where the seed will try to grow roots?  

Have a 3 wheeled floater drive every 90 ft spread fertilizer and compact a 10 ft wide strip from it's huge tires?  

Struggle to stay a float on top of soil that has little structure or strength to support equipment since it was pulverized by a ripper or a plow last fall?

Plant directly into those angular compacted wheel track zones and then wonder why the corn that grows in those spots is a different color  and stunted the rest of the year?

My point is that all systems have flaws....it's just easier to do a certain practice when everyone else is doing it along right with you...no matter if it's the right or wrong thing to do. These are all things that we used to do personally because we thought we didn't have any other way to do it that could work. 

One of my favorite experiences learning about strip till was a talking with a grower who was doing modified ridge till/strip till 2 years ago during a very wet spring in SW Minnesota. It was one of those springs where they could not catch a break with numerous 3-4 inch rainfall events that wasn't allowing anyone to get much accomplished. He had gotten an opportunity to get into the field and start planting some soybeans before the next rainfall event moved in and was able to plant about 40 acres of the field before he got rained out again by another inch of rain. I should note that in his his system he strip/ridged the main portion of the field but ripped and field cultivated his headlands. Two days later he went back to the field to find that his stripped/ridges were starting to grey off already but where he had field cultivated and planted the headlands they were still a muddy soupy mess. He took a chance and went out planted the remainder of the field by simply planting until he'd nose the tractor into the muddy headlands and then would lift the planter up, back around on the solid undisturbed stripped/ridged ground, set the planter down on the next pass and kept planting. He told us he nearly caused a traffic jam as the neighbors couldn't believe that he was out planting and were driving by watching what he was doing. Next thing he knew his neighbors were going home to get their own field cultivators to head out and try to start working ground on their own fields and made an absolute mess and had to pull out.  They couldn't believe that the ground that hadn't been tilled was dryer than the ripped ground. It was after hearing this story that I began to feel better about my fear of a cold wet spring.

Here are some other reasons why I like my chances with strip till in a wet spring:

-I'm planting into a slightly elevated seed bed that is relatively free of residue and will warm up and dry out faster than soils that haven't been tilled.  
-The area between my strips has soil structure in place that hasn't been disturbed and will better support equipment in the spring.
-The soil in between the strips also has all the natural drainage pathways still intact from earthworms and rotting root channels from last year which will help aid drainage through the profile to tile.  
-If we do get heavy rains, the increased water infiltration from the point above will help minimize runoff and off site movement of nutrients keeping them where they belong.
-The strips I plant into will not have any zones of wheel compaction under the surface to restrict root growth.
-My fertility is placed either with the seed or directly under it in the same compaction free zone.
-Our fertilizer applied in the fall does not dictate what crop we grow if we are forced to switch from our intial crop placement plans on certain farms All those points aside, there are still things that worry me if we have a wet spring including:

-If fall strip berm heights aren't sufficient and they settle to the point where I have a depression that won't dry out. 
-Carrying so much weight on the planter tractor between starter and UAN that we create significant pinch row compaction compared to those who don't carry so much weight.
-Controlling weeds that get a significant head start on the crop before we can get in to burn them down.
-Strips washing out on hill sides
-Dealing with residue deposit piles around low spots where ponding might occur

At the end of the day, I think the benefits of the pros outweigh the potential challenges of the cons when it comes to evaluating the risks of dealing with a wet spring with our new system.  That being said...I hope for all of us in the Midwest that my rookie confidence gets challenged and it starts raining this spring!   I'd gladly trade in a little ego for some moisture at this point!!!