Determining how much fertilizer to apply this spring is a lot like determining how much oil your tractor needs.

A common question often asked about no-till is whether any nutrient stratification occurs due to a lack of soil mixing. Many no-tillers wonder if stratification is a problem for effective crop access to soil nutrients.

Few, if any, farmers were spared the sticker shock of rising costs of fuel, fertilizer and ag chemicals in the past 16 months. But the reality is these costs have been steadily increasing for a decade or more as shown in Fig. 1.

Having no-tilled since 1972, Paul Schaffert has learned a few things while growing corn, wheat, soybeans, sunflowers, milo and grain sorghum on a 2,000-acre irrigated and dryland farm in Indianola, Neb. The lessons have come even harder recently, because the area, which normally receives 10 to 17 inches of rain each year, has been suffering through a drought for the past several years and irrigation is now restricted to 13 inches per year.

Gypsum applications on no-till fields could decrease surface crusting while improving aeration and water infiltration, thus aiding crop emergence, according to Warren Dick, an Ohio State University soil scientist.