Let’s go ahead of the curve now, and ask the question — “How practical is a smart sprayer in a no-till system?” Tyler Troiola is about to find out on in Eagle, Wis.

He installed a John Deere See & Spray Premium kit on his sprayer to target-spray weeds, and he’s going to use it for the first time on his second sprayer pass around V4. He questions how it’s going to handle heavy residue. Will the cameras be able to see the weeds? But he’s confident this kind of technology is going to pay off big time in his no-till system.

“I think we’ll have good luck with it because we’re at the scope that we can still do a good job managing it. It may add a spray pass to our system, but we’re at the level where we have the time to be able to scout, make that decision and make another pass. A lot of guys or the co-op aren’t going to add another pass to their system. Being no-till and having cover crops as long as we do, we don’t have a very big weed bank here, so we don’t deal with a lot of nasty weeds as it is because the cover crops or the cereal rye are holding the weeds down already. I’m hoping that as this technology adapts, our weed bank doesn’t grow as well, but I guess we’re expecting to have some problems the first year or two.”  

We’ll check in with Tyler soon to see how it goes.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.