Smithville, Ga., strip-tiller Alex Harrell has raised the bar once again with a 218-bushel soybean yield, shattering his own 206-bushel record from 2023.

“Last year took everybody by surprise,” Harrell says. “This year verified that we’re able to do it with a different fertility program on a different soil type 15 miles from where we did it last year. We changed varieties, seed companies and herbicide traits. It gives me peace of mind knowing this isn’t a fluke, it’s something that can be replicated.” 

Amidst all the changes, strip-till and cover crops remain staple ingredients in Harrell’s record-breaking recipe. The 34-year-old used a wheat cover crop over the winter before strip-tilling through the terminated cover crop ground in early spring with a Schlagel Rapid Till. One big change he made from last year is backing off on chicken litter pre-plant and replacing it with banded fertility in the strip.  

“We ran an 8-row deep ripper pass, and then about 3 weeks later, came back with the Schlagel Rapid Till at a shallower depth to freshen the strip up,” Harrell says. “We banded fertility with the Schlagel unit and a Montag cart pulled behind it.”

Harrell banded a homogenized fertilizer mix that contains nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K), sulfur, zinc, iron and copper in every pellet.

“I’ve been strip-tilling for 7 years now. The combination of strip-till and cover crops has been a game changer for me. Not only do cover crops improve water infiltration and reduce the amount of water we need to irrigate soybeans, but they also help with weed suppression and, most of all, erosion control over the winter months.”

Harrell planted the Pioneer P49Z02E soybeans March 21 in 30-inch rows at a seeding rate of 110,000 on red clay soil, a stark difference from last year when he planted an Asgrow AG48X9 variety in early April at a rate of 85,000 on sandy loam soil.

“Last year, we had a lot of limbs break off, and we were trying to thicken up the stand with a higher population,” Harrell says. “We ended up with a final stand of 105,000. We didn’t have any limbs breaking off, but we did have some lodging on the entire plants.

“At planting, we had 4 things going out of the planter: seed, an in-furrow mix, a 3-x-3 mix and an herbicide mix broadcast out the back of the planter.”

Harrell says early planting and late-season management were two big keys to success this year. He kept the soybeans pumped up with foliar fertilizer throughout the season at rates determined by weekly tissue tests.

“The soybean plant takes up about 67% of its fertility after R1,” Harrell told Strip-Till Farmer in 2023 after his 206-bushel yield. “That’s when we start hammering it with PGRs, foliar fertility and fungicides. We band nutrients next to the rows with Y-drops and inject nutrients through the pivot irrigation system.” 

Harrell hopes to raise his overall yield average by applying the lessons learned from high-yield plots to the rest of his 4,000 acres.

“We’ve learned a lot about the benefits of early planting, PGRs, tissue tests and nutrient balances,” Harrell says. “But the main thing we’ve taken away from these high-yield plots is how important singulation is on soybeans, not just corn. Emergence is still king in corn, but singulation is more important in soybeans. Making sure the planter is dialed in perfectly is huge. That doesn’t cost anything but time. It’s not a product in a jug, a dry fertilizer or anything like that. It’s just making sure the planter is dialed in and we’re getting proper singulation and emergence, that’s the easiest way to get free bushels.”  

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