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To TIll Or Not To Till.., Not The Only Question
Strip-Till Becoming A Popular Alternative To No-Till
By Rita Brhel
newsroom@yankton.net
When it comes to field tillage options, most producers think of either tilling or not. Both have their pros and cons, but in recent years, no-till has received a lot of attention from researchers and producers as a way to not only reduce soil compaction and boost natural fertility and moisture-holding capacity, but also decrease fuel and commercial fertilizer costs.
Still, there are many producers who like the idea of no-till but haven’t committed to parking the disk. A third option, strip-till, may be just what these producers are looking for.
“A lot of folks see strip-till as something between no-till and full-width tillage” or ridge-till, said Greg Horstmeier, production editor with the Omaha-based agricultural news service DTN. “It’s a practice that works when sometimes no-till doesn’t.”
Strip-till is a minimal tillage system, in which narrow strips of vertically tilled soil are created along either side of the pre-planted seed row but leaving the seed row itself undisturbed. Strip-till equipment also moves the surface plant residue to the side of the undisturbed seed row soil. In addition, commercial fertilizer may be added to the strip of tilled soil to place a boost of fertility close to the seed.
Typically, strip-till is done in the fall. The strips create a ridge three to four inches high, which improves soil drainage and warming in the spring. By spring, these ridges settle down to one to two inches high and flatten after planting, eliminating any standing water between the ridges lining the seed row.
“Strip-till allows the cost-reduction benefits of no-till without the production problems seen in cool, wet conditions with no-till,” said Horstmeier, who — along with Mark Thompson, a consultant with Sunderman Farm Management services in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Michael Peterson, a precision tillage agronomist with Orthman Manufacturing in Lexinton, Neb. — took part in a recent DTN webinar on strip-till, open to producers across the nation.
Strip-till is used on fields to be planted to corn and in areas with cool, wet springs and heavy black soils, especially in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. While a relatively new idea in South Dakota and Nebraska, strip till provides an option to those no-till producers who encounter an especially wet or cool spring, or to conventional tillers who aren’t ready to go no-till all the way yet.
“It works really, really well in sandy soils,” Peterson said. “It works best in cold, wet soils in South Dakota and North Dakota, which need to get those soils warmed up fast enough. When people are buying $5 corn, they want that resource working coming out of the chute.”
Besides helping the seed bed dry and warm up faster than with no-till, strip-till retain no-till’s benefits of increased soil carbon, fuel and labor savings, minimal soil compaction, and reduced soil erosion and water runoff.
“Soils that used to take 1 3/4 inches of water, now take four to five times that,” Peterson said. “Soils are warming up one to seven degrees more.”
Thompson said his experience has been similar, that he’s seen strip-tilled fields able to handle heavy rain events much better and warming up five to 10 degrees more than no-tilled fields. When compared to conventional tillage, he said strip-till cuts fuel costs down by 50 to 60 percent.
Equipment Needed
The downside to strip-till is that producers do need specialized equipment. In some areas, through, the Natural Resources Conservation Service may offer cost-share to assist in purchasing the equipment, since strip-till is considered a conservation farming practice.
Typically a strip-tiller includes a row cleaner to move heavy plant residue, a coulter to cut through any remaining residue, a shank usually with a mole knife to loosen soil and place fertilizer deeply with little topsoil disturbance, and “covering” disks to catch any soil thrown up by the shank to keep the soil within the narrow strip — all of which are mounted on a tool bar equipped with row markers and that is the same width as the corn planter, because the planter will run precisely where the strips are placed. In addition, the planter will need to be adjusted for planting into soft soil produced by the tilled environment.
“It’s important to know how to set your machine, make it level,” Peterson said, to make sure the equipment stays in the ground. Plus, “fine-tuning is very important if you’re placing fertility,” he added.
If fertilizer is placed during strip tillage, a dry form air caddy, liquid fertilizer tank, or anhydrous ammonia pull-behind wagon and injector would need to be added to the equipment.
“You’ll need to till while delivering your fertilizer,” Horstmeier said.
He recommends marrying the strip-till unit to the planter. The tractor itself must have approximately 15 to 20 horsepower per row to cut through the heavy soil and not drift to the side. Tractors should also be selected for long-term durability, flex, and side-hill draft.
“When we do go below 10 inches, research shows we need 4,000 pounds of force per shank,” Peterson said to give an idea of the power need for vertical tillage. Strip tillage is typically done four to eight inches deep, with six to eight inches deep if with fertilizer placement. Equipment needs to create a clean cut without underground explosions caused by slow, low-power equipment.
“When you get into the Dakotas, you need a well-built machine that's durable,” Peterson said. “You need a well-built machine to get through those conditions.”
Producers should be able to run at least 1,000 acres without any problems, he said.
Fertilizer Placement
When placing fertilizer, Peterson recommended producers consider using GPS-autosteering to ensure placement is exactly where the crop needs it — approximately two inches from the seed.
“When you get into hilly ground, (GPS) guidance is a Godsend,” he said. “You don’t want it drifting; it’ll drift 18 inches on you, and that’s not good.”
Fertilizer placement in relations to seed placement is paramount to getting as much benefit out of the fertilizer as possible and not wasting carelessly: “When we exceed four inches away from where that fertility was,” in terms of seed placement, “we begin to see a drop off in yield,” Peterson said. Last year, in the fields he worked in, this reduction in yield averaged six bushels an acre. “Once you get to eight inches away from where that fertilizer was, the drop is very significant,” he said — to the tune of 30 bushels per acre.
“That’s something farmers don’t want; they want every seed to come up,” he added.
Peterson prefers liquid fertilizer for his crops, saying that it releases its nutrient most quickly to the crop. However, he admits that with fertilizer costs as high as they are, “no one is going to be in a soil-building program anymore.” His advice: Producers should take advantage of the no-till benefits of strip-till by testing the soil and working to build soil carbon through plant residue.
“Getting your soil opened up helps those (soil) microbes to get to eating the carbon,” Peterson said. But, he advises producers not to drop their commercial fertility programs just yet, because it takes about three years of undisturbed soil carbon-building to get to a point where the producer begins to see the results in his required soil fertility. Also, as Thompson warns, “there’s a lot of variance between hybrid and hybrid, as far as residue.”
So, for some producers, it may take longer or shorter for the residue to make a difference. The way producers can know when the natural fertility is starting to take over is through soil testing, Peterson said. He advises soil samples to be taken for testing at depths of four to five inches, six inches, and two feet.
“Strip tillage gives roots an opportunity to go deeper, and as they go deeper, they tap into nutrients we don't know are down there,” Peterson said.
If producers do want to apply fertilizer while strip-tilling, there are more factors to consider than the price of fertilizer: “Making sure you’re traveling at the right speed is important,” Peterson said. “Know how your moisture conditions are going to be, so you're not fertilizing slop-smear. You want to stay at an even depth in the ground, so you're placing fertility where you want to place it, so we're really fertilizing appropriately for the plant and for the field.”
Getting Started
Producers should not hurry out to buy their own strip-till equipment if they're interested in trying strip-till, Thompson said. He recommended producers doing as much research as they can — reading articles, and talking with university Extension educators other producers.
“It’s not rocket science, but get an agronomist,” Peterson agreed.
Not only do producers have to consider equipment and fertilizer, but soil types and even specific corn hybrids can affect success with strip-till.
“Make sure you know how these things work for you, and strip-till is a good system,” Peterson said, referring to the “5 Rs of Strip Tillage.”
The best source of information for beginning strip-tillers are those producers who have done it for a number of years and have encountered and conquered common, or not-so-common, challenges of strip tillage.
“I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to go into this, find a neighbor with the equipment and have him try it on 40 acres of your land,” Peterson said. “Ask lots of questions.”
Still, there are many producers who like the idea of no-till but haven’t committed to parking the disk. A third option, strip-till, may be just what these producers are looking for.
“A lot of folks see strip-till as something between no-till and full-width tillage” or ridge-till, said Greg Horstmeier, production editor with the Omaha-based agricultural news service DTN. “It’s a practice that works when sometimes no-till doesn’t.”
Strip-till is a minimal tillage system, in which narrow strips of vertically tilled soil are created along either side of the pre-planted seed row but leaving the seed row itself undisturbed. Strip-till equipment also moves the surface plant residue to the side of the undisturbed seed row soil. In addition, commercial fertilizer may be added to the strip of tilled soil to place a boost of fertility close to the seed.
Typically, strip-till is done in the fall. The strips create a ridge three to four inches high, which improves soil drainage and warming in the spring. By spring, these ridges settle down to one to two inches high and flatten after planting, eliminating any standing water between the ridges lining the seed row.
“Strip-till allows the cost-reduction benefits of no-till without the production problems seen in cool, wet conditions with no-till,” said Horstmeier, who — along with Mark Thompson, a consultant with Sunderman Farm Management services in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Michael Peterson, a precision tillage agronomist with Orthman Manufacturing in Lexinton, Neb. — took part in a recent DTN webinar on strip-till, open to producers across the nation.
Strip-till is used on fields to be planted to corn and in areas with cool, wet springs and heavy black soils, especially in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. While a relatively new idea in South Dakota and Nebraska, strip till provides an option to those no-till producers who encounter an especially wet or cool spring, or to conventional tillers who aren’t ready to go no-till all the way yet.
“It works really, really well in sandy soils,” Peterson said. “It works best in cold, wet soils in South Dakota and North Dakota, which need to get those soils warmed up fast enough. When people are buying $5 corn, they want that resource working coming out of the chute.”
Besides helping the seed bed dry and warm up faster than with no-till, strip-till retain no-till’s benefits of increased soil carbon, fuel and labor savings, minimal soil compaction, and reduced soil erosion and water runoff.
“Soils that used to take 1 3/4 inches of water, now take four to five times that,” Peterson said. “Soils are warming up one to seven degrees more.”
Thompson said his experience has been similar, that he’s seen strip-tilled fields able to handle heavy rain events much better and warming up five to 10 degrees more than no-tilled fields. When compared to conventional tillage, he said strip-till cuts fuel costs down by 50 to 60 percent.
Equipment Needed
The downside to strip-till is that producers do need specialized equipment. In some areas, through, the Natural Resources Conservation Service may offer cost-share to assist in purchasing the equipment, since strip-till is considered a conservation farming practice.
Typically a strip-tiller includes a row cleaner to move heavy plant residue, a coulter to cut through any remaining residue, a shank usually with a mole knife to loosen soil and place fertilizer deeply with little topsoil disturbance, and “covering” disks to catch any soil thrown up by the shank to keep the soil within the narrow strip — all of which are mounted on a tool bar equipped with row markers and that is the same width as the corn planter, because the planter will run precisely where the strips are placed. In addition, the planter will need to be adjusted for planting into soft soil produced by the tilled environment.
“It’s important to know how to set your machine, make it level,” Peterson said, to make sure the equipment stays in the ground. Plus, “fine-tuning is very important if you’re placing fertility,” he added.
If fertilizer is placed during strip tillage, a dry form air caddy, liquid fertilizer tank, or anhydrous ammonia pull-behind wagon and injector would need to be added to the equipment.
“You’ll need to till while delivering your fertilizer,” Horstmeier said.
He recommends marrying the strip-till unit to the planter. The tractor itself must have approximately 15 to 20 horsepower per row to cut through the heavy soil and not drift to the side. Tractors should also be selected for long-term durability, flex, and side-hill draft.
“When we do go below 10 inches, research shows we need 4,000 pounds of force per shank,” Peterson said to give an idea of the power need for vertical tillage. Strip tillage is typically done four to eight inches deep, with six to eight inches deep if with fertilizer placement. Equipment needs to create a clean cut without underground explosions caused by slow, low-power equipment.
“When you get into the Dakotas, you need a well-built machine that's durable,” Peterson said. “You need a well-built machine to get through those conditions.”
Producers should be able to run at least 1,000 acres without any problems, he said.
Fertilizer Placement
When placing fertilizer, Peterson recommended producers consider using GPS-autosteering to ensure placement is exactly where the crop needs it — approximately two inches from the seed.
“When you get into hilly ground, (GPS) guidance is a Godsend,” he said. “You don’t want it drifting; it’ll drift 18 inches on you, and that’s not good.”
Fertilizer placement in relations to seed placement is paramount to getting as much benefit out of the fertilizer as possible and not wasting carelessly: “When we exceed four inches away from where that fertility was,” in terms of seed placement, “we begin to see a drop off in yield,” Peterson said. Last year, in the fields he worked in, this reduction in yield averaged six bushels an acre. “Once you get to eight inches away from where that fertilizer was, the drop is very significant,” he said — to the tune of 30 bushels per acre.
“That’s something farmers don’t want; they want every seed to come up,” he added.
Peterson prefers liquid fertilizer for his crops, saying that it releases its nutrient most quickly to the crop. However, he admits that with fertilizer costs as high as they are, “no one is going to be in a soil-building program anymore.” His advice: Producers should take advantage of the no-till benefits of strip-till by testing the soil and working to build soil carbon through plant residue.
“Getting your soil opened up helps those (soil) microbes to get to eating the carbon,” Peterson said. But, he advises producers not to drop their commercial fertility programs just yet, because it takes about three years of undisturbed soil carbon-building to get to a point where the producer begins to see the results in his required soil fertility. Also, as Thompson warns, “there’s a lot of variance between hybrid and hybrid, as far as residue.”
So, for some producers, it may take longer or shorter for the residue to make a difference. The way producers can know when the natural fertility is starting to take over is through soil testing, Peterson said. He advises soil samples to be taken for testing at depths of four to five inches, six inches, and two feet.
“Strip tillage gives roots an opportunity to go deeper, and as they go deeper, they tap into nutrients we don't know are down there,” Peterson said.
If producers do want to apply fertilizer while strip-tilling, there are more factors to consider than the price of fertilizer: “Making sure you’re traveling at the right speed is important,” Peterson said. “Know how your moisture conditions are going to be, so you're not fertilizing slop-smear. You want to stay at an even depth in the ground, so you're placing fertility where you want to place it, so we're really fertilizing appropriately for the plant and for the field.”
Getting Started
Producers should not hurry out to buy their own strip-till equipment if they're interested in trying strip-till, Thompson said. He recommended producers doing as much research as they can — reading articles, and talking with university Extension educators other producers.
“It’s not rocket science, but get an agronomist,” Peterson agreed.
Not only do producers have to consider equipment and fertilizer, but soil types and even specific corn hybrids can affect success with strip-till.
“Make sure you know how these things work for you, and strip-till is a good system,” Peterson said, referring to the “5 Rs of Strip Tillage.”
The best source of information for beginning strip-tillers are those producers who have done it for a number of years and have encountered and conquered common, or not-so-common, challenges of strip tillage.
“I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to go into this, find a neighbor with the equipment and have him try it on 40 acres of your land,” Peterson said. “Ask lots of questions.”
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