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Post by nctobfarmer on Apr 2, 2013 16:47:20 GMT -5
Got lots of pictures riding around today. Tillage is wrapping up and corn followed by cotton will start going into the ground soon. 7820 disking  This is on a research farm for NC State University--a 7800 on the KMC field cultivator and a 7800 on the KMC 6 row bedder. Probably doing this for cotton based on the row spacing. This was the traditional way we grew cotton for a long time. You can see the field was disked, then the FC came through follow by the bedder.  An increasingly popular hybrid of no-till and conventional tillage is strip till. 8320 with 8 row strip till rig:  Strips completed in a neighboring field  The big farmer in the area and their Unverferth 12 row strip till with planter attached  Also saw one Case pulling a DMI 4 shank no till ripper but was not able to get a photo. |
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Post by duplin97 on Apr 6, 2013 21:40:55 GMT -5
A lot of the big operations are switching over to strip till. Only one big operation (2000+ acres) in the area is conventional tillage. Most prefer the one pass setup, with their planters hooked up behind the strip till unit. I can only think of one farm in the area that runs a strip till rig without planters behind it. Most of the smaller operations (sub 1500) run conventional tillage. 8400 I saw a few days ago bedding some ground south of Mount Olive.  |
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Post by Southern on Apr 9, 2013 20:24:47 GMT -5
I need to head over to our cotton guys to see if they are planting. Our guys just plant it right into the ground by no-till. They make no beds or anything. It planted right into the ground.
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Post by nctobfarmer on Apr 10, 2013 19:22:18 GMT -5
Southern, there is some flat planted no-till cotton here as well. The man that runs our farm does it that way. Another hybrid idea is running a DMI or similar min-till 3 pt ripper at a shallow angle across the field, then flat planting the cotton with no other tillage in between.
The strip-till concept is starting to over shadow that method though. The angled ripper pass can make the subsequent field trips for planting, spraying, and harvesting bumpy, and the "slot" is not directly under the row, so I'm not sure the plant roots get the full benefit of loosening the soil when you run at an angle like that.
What's interesting is that you see all three methods in the same geographic area, flat planted no-till or minimum till with a min-till straight leg ripper, strip tillage, and conventional tillage on beds. Spacing also varies in all three methods from 30" to 38". However, most cotton is grown on either 36" or 38" centers.
I suspect that the NCSU farm is doing a cotton yield test on traditional tillage with a final ripper bedder pass and comparing it to strip till. The field on the other side of the road from the one pictured has been strip tilled.
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Post by Southern on Apr 11, 2013 18:28:27 GMT -5
I don't know about your area. But if you no-till you get special benefits from it from the government. At least what I was told. No-till took off big time in the late 90s in my area. The field around my house and many others. Hadn't been tilled in over a decade. Some even longer. And yields have yet to been effected by it.
Granted this works in some areas. But this is what we do. I don't really reflect this on my display. Cause I like to till. Wasn't for that, I would do like what the real guys do. Plant spray and done.
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