On this episode of Conservation Ag Update, brought to you by Martin-Till, southern Indiana no-tiller Ray McCormick shows off the unique features of his Horsch Maestro 2430 planter. Meanwhile, 40 miles east of McCormick, Strip-Till Innovator Award recipient Chris Perkins shows how chains on his planter deliver ROI in more ways than one.

Later, in the Cover Crop Connection segment, Georgetown, Del., no-tiller Jay Baxter takes us inside his accidental cover crop experiment.

In the Ahead of the Curve segment, Adam Gittins, Harlan, Iowa farmer and president of drone dealer HTS Ag, explains why an FAA violation in Florida serves as a harsh reminder to check all your boxes before operating drones. 

Plus, Rock Creek, Minn., no-tiller and strip-tiller Jon Stevens runs through the in-season adjustments he made to get his struggling crops back on track, and David Hula checks in from Charles City, Va., with a preview of his 2024 National Strip-Tillage Conference presentation.

This episode of Conservation Ag Update is brought to you by Martin-Till.  

Our customers believe that Martin-Till®️ products provide an excellent return on their investment. We know this because a large percentage of them are repeat customers since the beginning in 1991. Our planter attachments help make it possible to plant into higher levels of residue and moisture. Higher levels of mulch means less erosion, improved soil tilth and fertility, which can reduce production costs.

 Martin-Till’s goal is to increase yields and save you time and money. We hope you find something from our product offerings of row cleaner, UMO’s, closing wheels systems and recently added concaves that will make this year’s planting & harvesting go better for you. After all, you deserve the best!

 


TRANSCRIPT

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No-Till Legend’s ‘True No-Till’ Planter Setup

It’s been a wet growing season for many of you, including no-tiller Ray McCormick in southwestern Indiana, where a heavy downpour May 14 drowned about 80% of his corn in a 250-acre field and set back his growing season ever since. 

It was a stressful spring for the 2024 Conservation Ag Operator Fellow, but it would’ve been much worse if he didn’t have cover crops planted on all his acres and if he didn’t have this heavy duty Horsch Maestro 2430 SW corn planter. He switched from a John Deere planter in 2014 to overcome problems he was having with rivets ripping out of the Deere planter’s true V openers and too much disturbance from the fertilizer boot. During a recent No-Till Farmer webinar, McCormick showcased something very unique about the planter. 

“The first thing you might notice is, there’s no row cleaner. There’s no coulter or row cleaner.  If you believe in minimal soil disturbance, then I didn’t like this raking all the residue over and disturbing the residue and so forth. Paul Jasa, the famous guy from Nebraska who does all the research on no-till, does a presentation on why you shouldn’t use a row cleaner because you have a cleared off area and a heavy residue area, and so you have non-uniformity at the soil surface. He wants perfect uniformity. When I don’t move anything, then you have a hard time finding the row. You have a hard time finding slot because of so little disturbance. One of the keys to doing that is you have to have these superior disc openers. These are far bigger and sturdier, and have a great bearing system.” 

Catch McCormick’s full planter walk-through on No-TillFarmer.com and in the August issue of No-Till Farmer’s Conservation Tillage Guide arriving in your mailbox next week. 

Chains Provide Multiple Benefits for Strip-Till Innovator

Let’s keep the planter talk going. Chris Perkins, who lives about 40 miles east of McCormick, calls his John Deere 1775 ExactEmerge planter a cheat code. It’s helped him break the 300-bushel barrier multiple times.

The 2024 Strip-Till Innovator Award recipient’s planter has hydraulic downforce, AutoPath and a 2-by-2-by-2 setup that allows for precise fertilizer placement. And he also has chains on his planter, which he says have some pros and cons but ultimately deliver ROI in more ways than one. 

“It’s simple, it’s practical, it’s a pain in the butt sometimes. I’m not real crazy about them, and other times I absolutely love them. One of the things that I love to do, it does not concern me, when I look at a forecast if I see I’ve got 5 days I’m going to be in the 70s, 80s, whatever and there’s no rain coming, I’ll sock that corn in 3-3 ¼ inches deep. It doesn’t worry me a bit. One of the things I noticed that the chains did, they poke and they knead. I read an article about some research that had been done, saying even though we can’t see the light that might be getting down in the seed trench, it was present in the plant, and it could cause them to come out and follow that path. The chains just eliminated that, took that and smoothed it all out. As far as running chains because of the starter, I’m not really worried about that. I did it more for emergence on the corn — that’s the biggest reason.”  

Learn more about some of Chris’ equipment cheat codes on StripTillFarmer.com.

An Accidental Cover Crop Experiment

Mackane Vogel here with this week’s Cover Crop Connection. Georgetown, Del., no-tiller Jay Baxter was planning on conducting a cover crop experiment with oats, but when Mother Nature got in the way, he quickly pivoted to another idea for a different type of cover crop experiment. 

“We configured an actual corn planter to plant wheat with to get it on 30-inch centers in a twin row. That way we can get the soybeans growing in between it in the spring. We come in and we plant our winter wheat in the fall. It got late on us, and so we stopped, and then it got extremely wet, and so that turned into well, why don’t we do an experiment and let’s grow some oats — which we knew we could plant spring oats on the rest of the field. So that back corner was left fallow for the winter with the intention of coming back. But it seemed like every 3 weeks we’d get 6 inches of rain. And it was — long story short — we never finished the experiment, so now we’ve got full season soybeans planted in 30-inch rows and soybeans planted in intercrop wheat in 30-inch rows, and they were planted within a day of each other. So, that’s enough of an experiment in and of itself. Anything can turn into an experiment if you try hard enough.”

“So there’s our soybeans. They’re kind of thirsty for some water. But research shows us if we keep the soybean plant under stress until it starts to go into its reproductive mode, then it tends to put on more yield and so we are intentionally not running this irrigation. But you look at this and it’s hard to turn your back on a withered up soybean plant.”

Baxter says the current weather of 85 degrees and 95% humidity might be a little too extreme, and it might be necessary to run irrigation just to keep the soybeans alive if rain doesn’t come in the next day or two. That’s all for this week’s cover crop connection. Until next time, back to you Noah. 

Ahead of the Curve: Cautionary Tale for Drone Pilots

Switching gears to a story out of Florida, where a large drone dealer can no longer fly drones over 55 pounds after multiple alleged FAA violations. FAA officials showed up at a training session hosted by the dealer and learned the pilot in command allegedly didn’t have registration for the drone, and he was flying it too close to a non-participating farmer. For some perspective, we reached out to Adam Gittins, president of Harlan, Iowa-based drone dealer HTS Ag. Adam says this case serves as a harsh reminder to make sure all your boxes are checked before operating a drone.

“Let me make an analogy here about what was happening. This person was driving a vehicle with no license plates on it. But not only did it not have license plates on it, it had never been registered. And when they got pulled over, they also did not have their driver’s license with them. They did not have proof of insurance. They did not have their registration. And they were driving on the wrong side of the road.”

“There was a whole bunch of small things that should be fairly simple and fairly easy to do that led to the action that the FAA took on it. My experience in working with the FAA, I’ve done that a few times, their heart, their goal and their desire is to educate people. They don’t want to take action against people. I’ve seen them offer a tremendous amount of grace to people that just didn’t know. But as large as a company as this was, these were things they should’ve known.” 

For more information, and key takeaways from Gittins, we posted a link to the case in the article for this episode on No-TillFarmer.com. 

V3-V5 Foliar Feed Pays Off for Struggling Corn

Jon Stevens says his corn had front row seats on the struggle bus because Mother Nature just wasn’t cooperating. But the Rock Creek, Minn., no-tiller made some last-minute adjustments to get his corn back on trackAnd as he explains in our Video of the Week, those adjustments likely saved his crop.  

“Instead of just throwing all the nitrogen on at one time and then just sitting on the pontoon all summer and thinking ‘I hope we have a good crop,’  let’s put in the effort, let’s work extra hard, let’s invest in the crop, and so then we came back and did a V3-V5 foliar feed to complement the macronutrients that were spread out here, and that foliar feed, do your own reading and research on V3-V5 in corn. There’s many, many, many trials showing that’s a significant point of influence and it’s paying off. It’s very much paying off. We are green to the ground. Some of the old growth leaves still show the damage. I’ve been pacing back and forth. You don’t have to go very deep into the soil and you run into moisture.”  

Stevens says he added about an extra 50 pounds of nitrogen on his second pass because a lot of his corn was still playing catch up after a slow start. 

Have an interesting photo or video from your farm? Or a story you’d like us to feature on the broadcast? Send me an email at Nnewman@lesspub.com.

And that will wrap things up this edition of Conservation Ag Update. Until next time, for more stories visit no-illfarmer.com, striptillfarmer.com and covercropstrategies.com. Before we go, let’s send it out to Dave Hula for a preview of his upcoming presentation at the National Strip-Tillage Conference. Thanks for tuning in! Have a great day!