LIKE MANY NO-TILLERS, especially in our area of Ohio, we were frustrated with our early experiences. Way back in 1977, after our local dealer demonstrated the 5100 White no-till planter to my dad, one-pass farming looked really appealing.

We were being pushed to find enough time to grow crops with conventional tillage, handle livestock and also work off the farm (I was a full-time ag education teacher). We had steep, erodible slopes as well as level fields where we needed a new cropping approach.

Over the next several years, we struggled with no-till. The planter worked well when the soil dried out early and we got the seed in on time. When we had wet springs, which happen often in our area, we just had to watch while the neighbors were out tearing everything up with a field cultivator and planting ahead of us. That wasn’t much fun.

PLANTER SET-UP IS FIRST BIG STEP

In the mid-1990s, I really learned the value of the Internet for no-tillers. I got on the crop scouting talk page on www.agriculture.com and posted a message that I was ready to quit no-till unless I found answers for the wet spring problems we were having. As luck would have it, Washington, Iowa, no-tiller Paul Reed…