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Martha Mintz

Martha Mintz

Since 2011, Martha has authored the highly popular “What I’ve Learned About No-Till” series that has appeared in every issue of No-Till Farmer since August of 2002.


Growing up on a cattle ranch in southeastern Montana, Martha is a talented ag writer and photographer who lives with her family in Billings, Montana.

Articles

ARTICLES

Cover Crops
What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Locked Down No-Till System Protects Sloping Fields, Profits

Iowa no-tiller and American Soybean Assn. chairman Ray Gaesser is adapting his no-till system to better manage aggressive weather patterns.
By Ray Gaesser and Martha Mintz posted on April 17, 2015 | Posted in No-Till Farming 101, Residue Management, Water Management
We thought we had no-till down pretty good, at least as far as controlling water erosion, but Mother Nature always likes to put you in your place when you get a little too confident.
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What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Tinkering For No-Till Perfection

No-tiller Danny Wipf won't rest until every no-tilled seed is tucked firmly and accurately into the mellow no-till soils at the Lakeview Hutterite Colony.
By Martha Mintz and Danny Wipf posted on March 20, 2015 | Posted in Seeding & Planting, Equipment
No-tiller Danny Wipf won't rest until every no-tilled seed is tucked firmly and accurately into the mellow no-till soils at the Lakeview Hutterite Colony.
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Hilton
What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Inheriting A Legacy of No-Till

With no-till long established by an innovator of the practice, the Hilton family in Alberta is free to focus on their business and the next big things.
By Spencer and Gordon Hilton and Martha Mintz posted on February 11, 2015 | Posted in Seeding & Planting, Equipment

Spencer: Running 10,000 acres of no-tilled hard red spring wheat, malting barley and canola in southern Alberta, Canada, is a team effort for our family. Until recently, when my parents, Gordon and Viola Hilton, exited the partnership, our farm was run by three generations.


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Don’t Let Lingering Herbicides Hamper Cover Crop Success

The wrong herbicide used at the wrong time, or impacted by the wrong environmental conditions, can limit — or even destroy — a costly cover crop seeding.
By Martha Mintz posted on January 9, 2015 | Posted in Crop Protection
Sometimes cover crops fail. This is especially true as no-tillers navigate the trial-and-error years of determining what species, seeding methods and timings work in their region and on their farm.
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What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Harvesting Sunlight, Feeding No-Till Soils

Jim Harbach and Schrack Farms Partnership is using a diverse no-till, cover-crop system to build up organic-matter levels in rocky limestone soils.
By Martha Mintz posted on January 9, 2015 | Posted in No-Till Farming 101
Our farm perplexed our crop advisor, Gerard Troisi. He consults with many farms in our area of Pennsylvania with a diverse range of production practices. But he struggled to explain how we increased our soil organic matter by 1% in just 3 years while consistently removing virtually all biomass.
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What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Breaking Through the No-Till Barrier with Cover Crops

Adding winter wheat, livestock and cover crops helped Paul Ackley overcome his no-till plateau, simplify his planter and build more productive soils.
By Martha Mintz posted on December 8, 2014 | Posted in No-Till Farming 101, Cover Crops
I never was one to like tillage. It just didn’t make sense. You would go through and make a perfect seedbed to plant into and then, without fail, you couldn’t get back in the field with the planter before it would rain. Then you would have to start all over again.
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What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Donning No-Till Armor To Save Soils

Lucas Criswell is pushing his 30-year no-till system another step higher by seeding row crops into taller cover crops and using precision technology to safeguard nutrients and the environment.
By Martha Mintz posted on November 1, 2014 | Posted in Cover Crops, Nutrient Management
I wish I could rewind and start over no-tilling with what I know now. The longer we no-till, the more we learn about what was really happening in our fields as we made the transition, and what we could have done then to take our soils farther, faster.
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What I've Learned from No-Tilling

When Wet Or Dry, No-Till Rotations, Covers And Cattle Are The Answer

The Cowans adopted no-till because of drought, but found intense rotations and cover crops helped them deal with today’s excess moisture.
By John Dobberstein and Martha Mintz posted on October 1, 2014 | Posted in No-Till Farming 101, Water Management
My father, Art, truly stumbled into no-till by pure happenstance. In the early 1980s he decided he needed to get away for a day or two so he took a drive to North Dakota.
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What I've Learned from No-Tilling

Bucking The Tillage Trend In An Alpine Desert

No-till practices are saving Colorado grower Billy Burns’ soils, and even helping his fields recover from a tragic herbicide mistake.
By Billy Burns and Martha Mintz posted on September 1, 2014 | Posted in Cover Crops, Soil Health
As no-tillers we are definitely an oddity here in the highly productive San Luis Valley of Colorado. While we strive to keep our acres covered and undisturbed, the farmers surrounding us move masses of earth with every crop.
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