“What We Wish Someone Would  Have Told Us Before We Started No-Till”

By Gary Moran

This year’s Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmers Association meeting in Bismarck included several farmers’ panels focusing on “what we wish someone would have told us before we started no-till.”  Farmers shared their experience and what they have learned on no-till fertilizer placement, seed placement and solid seeding of large-seeded crops, managing dry and wet soils, root enhancement products, strip tillage, and geospatial technology. A sampling of panel members and their topics and lessons learned:

Managing dry soils under no-till
Larry Signalness, Watford City, N.D., shared some lessons learned about managing dry soils under no-till management. The first thing, he says, is to establish a good residue base to protect the soil from water loss and wind erosion. The next step is to establish a rotation using both high water use and low water use crops, trying to create a base to prepare for dry years.

He suggests a beginning rotation of something like small grain, peas and lentils, then, once the base is established, back off on peas and lentils and go to some canola while retaining the small grains. If in a situation where more high water use crops are feasible, switch some of the broadleaf crops to sunflower or safflower. If faced with a ‘blowout’ drought situation, he says he could chem-fallow up to a third of his acreage if necessary, but he can usually get by without it. He obviously can’t control the environment, he says, but regardless of how dry it gets he will still have a better crop with no-till than with conventional tillage.

Cal Hoff, Richardton, N.D., added some philosophy abut surviving dry years. When drought conditions get really tough, he says, there is only so much you can do agronomically, then it all boils down to attitude and management (and adequate crop insurance coverage). He has found a good and honest long-term relationship with his banker and loyalty to local suppliers pays dividends through good times and bad. The management team – in his case his family – needs to redouble efforts to make sound decisions, communicate clearly and work together during the tough years. Actually, he says, these efforts are probably more important the year after falling short rather than the actual drought year.

Managing wet soils under no-till
At the other end of the spectrum, Joe Breker, Havana, N.D., shared some insights about coping with extremely wet soil conditions. When you get a lot of rain, but the soil is not completely saturated, no-till land will dry up faster so you can get back in the field. But, under the extreme wet conditions southeastern N.D. has suffered under recently, it’s just too wet, whether no-till or conventional.

Flotation becomes the name of the game, with tracks and big tires, along with equipment to repair fields damaged by too much water. There is no one particular piece of equipment best for seeding in mud, he says, but all will do fairly well if you have flotation. Equipment choices include the Summers super coulter and the Fargo Products twin coulter.

He says crop rotation is going to help more than anything, wet or dry. A rotation that includes both high and low residue has at least half the farm going back to high residue, which can be really challenging to seed into under wet conditions. 

Fertilizer placement in no-till
Trevor Cowieson of Souris, Manitoba, discussed lessons learned in his operation about fertilizer placement in no-till production. He says changes in equipment have gotten fertilizer placement to where it is today. In the 1980s and early ‘90s, most no-till systems used a separate banding operation or a broadcast application. He started changing from conventional to no-till in 1989, using a separate banding system. Some one-pass equipment was showing promise by 1992, but he kept using two-pass applications until 2002, using a midrow band.

In 2004 he added a wing injector with 7.2-inch spacing with a sideband an inch away from the seed and an inch below. He says there has always been discussion of which is best, midrow or sideband. Midrow has always worked well for him except for flax; flax roots took time to find the concentrated bands while sideband had immediate uptake.

He says significant research is confirming and explaining what is happening in long-term no-till fields. On the Cowieson farm, organic matter in the soil has increased by two times. Research also shows that flax growers need to watch seed-placed fertilizer as flax is intolerant to chemical phosphate.

Crops differ in sensitivity to amounts and types of fertilizer. He says they may increase seed rates if using seed placed starter fertilizer, but results may vary from farm to farm. He says people believe no-till takes expensive equipment, but he has found they were able to eliminate equipment, probably enough to pay for the drill, and that over the long term they have reduced herbicide use, only needing to spray 25 to 30% of wheat acreage for wild oat. Their operation is getting more efficient with no-till, he says.

The advantages of strip till
Ron Simonson, Roslyn, S.D., described his experiences with strip till. He prepares a strip in the fall with fertilizer, blackening s strip in heavy wet soil that warms quickly in the spring and allows a good seed bed for spring planting. He finds this does the most good in heavy wheat stubble but says every situation is different, depending on soil type and amount of residue. Some years with heavy snow and spring rains provide quite a challenge. He finds they get good placement of seed and seed to soil contact, which he says is the trick to planting corn.

Manitoba-North Dakota Zero Tillage Farmers Association online: www.mandakzerotill.org