When it's harvest time, we often get caught up in a flurry of activity. But it’s worth the time for no-tillers — especially after the wet planting season last spring — to see what you can learn by scouting your fields during harvest.

Taking a few minutes every day to do this helps help you assess how well your no-till system is working. It’s especially important with no-till to scout your combine’s performance in terms of saving grain and spreading residue evenly.

While searching for grain losses behind the machine, evaluate how well your head and combine are doing at processing and spreading residue uniformly. With differing conditions, slight adjustments may be needed to maximize performance.

Spread It Out

 A key to high-performing no-till systems is ensuring crop residue is spread evenly.

If residue is thicker in certain areas of the combine pass, you’ll have issues when planting next spring. Residue managers on your planter will struggle to work effectively if crop residue isn’t spread evenly. Plant stands will also suffer.

As you examine residue distribution, also look at final plant stands to assess how the heads are handling different plant populations.

As corn populations increase, you may need to increase the speed of your header relative to ground speed to adequately process residue and move it through the stalk rolls.

This adjustment will lower the amount of residue entering the combine and generally improve overall combine performance.

Eagle Eye

 Also look at populations and population uniformity to assess your…