It’s the age-old struggle — farmers scrambling to get their work done within the time frame that Mother Nature gives them. 

Depending on local weather patterns, it can be a challenge. Plus, farmers who follow regenerative agriculture practices can face a few additional hurdles in their race against the weather and poor field conditions. Thankfully, farmers and researchers have learned a few tricks to make it work.

One important principle of regenerative land management is to increase biodiversity. This means developing a diversified no-till crop rotation, such as adding wheat to a traditional corn and soybean rotation. 

“Winter wheat outyields spring wheat because it escapes the hot weather. Wheat and warm weather are just not friends,” says Dwyane Beck, South Dakota State University retired agronomist and long-time manager of the Dakota Lakes Research Farm near Pierre, S.D. 

The problem with winter wheat is that it’s hard to plant after soybean harvest. “Winter wheat behind soybeans just doesn’t look all that good,” Beck adds.

So the next best option is spring wheat. “Your best spring wheat is seeded early in most years because it escapes the hot weather,” he says. The problem is that some northern areas are wetter in the spring, making it difficult for farmers to get in the field early enough to no-till spring wheat. In those cases, spring wheat acres often go unplanted, leading to a crop rotation with less biodiversity.

Really Early? Think November

Since 1983 Beck has been using dormant seeding to get spring wheat planted early. The spring wheat is no-tilled in the winter, and the seeds go dormant until the spring thaw when they get a jump start on growth since they are already in the soil.

“Most instances where we’ve done comparisons — and I think we’ve had one exception — dormant seeded spring wheat yielded the same or better than spring seeded spring wheat,” Beck says.

If a no-tiller has a very diverse rotation, dormant seeding can help with the spring workflow. For instance, it can take the pressure off the workload of seeding spring crops like canola, peas, lentils and flax.

Think Black Friday No-Tilling

Beck says the best time to dormant seed spring wheat is before the weather turns bad in late November or early December. “We always joked that the ideal day to do that is the Friday after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday —  because you don’t have to go shopping with your wife,” he says.

Beck has even dormant seeded spring wheat into frozen ground. “We’ve done it after snow. If the ground is dry and frozen, it’s not hard, believe it or not. But if it’s moist when it freezes, you can’t get it done,” he adds. “Our goal is to do it prior to freezing.”

There are a few considerations that producers should be aware of. “You’ve got to be low disturbance. I’d like to see pretty of good residue with a history of having done no-till for a while. Then you got to have a good seeder,” he says. 

“We think you need to put fertilizer down with it. We’ve got some trials where that was an advantage with the phosphorus-, potassium-type starter fertilizers, not the nitrogen. Do things like you normally would and plant at the same depth.

He says the biggest hang up is that you’ve put the seeders away, and they’re all cleaned up. Then you drag them back out again, and days are incredibly short and cold

Despite these constraints, dormant seeding can help no-tillers get their spring wheat in the ground early and free up time in the spring. 

“The biggest thing is it gets it done,” says Beck. “Guys are just so busy in the spring.”

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