Re: Questions about no till

Posted by jackinok on September 29, 2011 at 09:12:00 from (162.58.82.136):

In Reply to: Questions about no till posted by oldtanker on September 29, 2011 at 06:36:39:

heres my opinion,you never get something for nothing!in my opinion the first thing you better check is what type of soil you have.and another is what type of crop you grow.the reason is pretty simple,say you had a place thats pretty sandy and well drained, with a fairly limited rainfall.which is fairly common on the high plains. and you decide you were going to raise oats on a no till basis.you really would be shooting yourself in the foot in my opinion,simply because you have well drained soil,limited rain,and a crop whose straw holds 6 times its weight in moisture.what limited amount of rain that fell would be held for the most part by the straw,never even reaching the crops roots ,since you were covered by straw and blocking the sun you would be cutting way back on the moisture drawn up from the subsoil and your crop would suffer as a result.do the exact thing on clay however with large rainfall and you would probably get a better crop because you would (theoretically) dry the soil out some.a better choice in the dryland situation with the same crop would be to use a limited till scenario where you left the straw that held so much moisture at root level or just below,so rain could be utilized more effeciently and moisture from the subsoil would be held also. thats sort of a extreme situation but you get the point.
to me ,and ive tried to look at it objectivly,there are a whole lot of variables to be considered besides just converting to a not till plan or not.plowing,deep tilling helps kill insect pests such as grashoppers,certain flies etc,that must be sprayed in a no till crop.it kills weeds and things that can be a problem in no till.what you save on fuel costs are somwhat offset by this so the actuall fuel costs are somewhat mitigated. bottom line ,like i say you never get something for nothing,i think largely you trade one set of problems for another.I have two small fields side by side,i am thinking very seriously about trying it also one on one side one on the other,most if not all of my equipment is worn out and needs to be replaced anyway so thats not really a consideration.what is though is the fact that very often a no till operation takes four or five years to really show a difference.im not sure in my case i would live long enough to make a real test LOL!

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