Seeing No-Till Work for the First Time
We have a neighbor who farms 6-7000 acres and has been truly no-till for at least 8 years. He has not used a deep tillage tool during that time. We will revisit him later.
In 2011 or 12 one of my best friends and my childhood hero was asked to be a part of a research program that actually had its roots in the water quality issue. The premise was basically that by keeping the fields covered with a growing plant year-round, there would be less erosion, resulting in better water quality. Remember the side-by-side fields at the Milan research station? One plus one equals two, correct?
In our community we are blessed to have a wonderful population of farmers willing to share their successes with each other. As I observed the research and spoke to the others involved in this research, my cat-killing curiosity kicked into high gear. My heart was beating a tad faster and boredom was banished.
The field that was in the project was planted to black oats as a winter covercrop. The field’s soil type is what we call around here “flat woods” dirt. It has a high clay content and is very droughty and unforgiving. This dirt will get in your pocketbook in a hurry. In fact I refused to farm that type of farm because of the difficulties it poses.
As cotton planting season approached, I asked my buddy to give me a heads up when that black oat field was to be planted because I wanted to be there to see it for myself. When I got the call, I stopped what I was doing and headed over to see the planting and in rolls the tractor with a planter hooked to it, but with no strip-till rig in sight. I suspect I had the same or at least a similar look on my face as my guys had when we rolled in to plant that first no-till field all those years ago.
The black oat covercrop had been terminated a couple of weeks prior but the thick cover was at least 18 inches tall. I followed the planter through the field checking for seed placement and depth of seed. I just knew all the seed would be on the surface and not deposited in the dirt. To my surprise I found very few seed that had not made it into the slit created by the planter’s openers for the critical seed-to-soil contact. What in the world is going on here boys and girls? This is flat woods dirt and in the best of conditions is a bugger to plant into.
What I noticed as I was digging to find seed was that the hard flat woods dirt was much more mellow than what I was used to seeing. Black oats have a massive root system that is thick and grows deep and is in fact one of my most favorite products to be used as a cover crop. This one year had started to change this soil. Was it absolutely perfect? Nope. Had the dirt changed in the right direction. Yep. Seeing change in this hard-to-work soil got me thinking that I needed to check the idea of using cover crops for truth and practicality. Another challenge, another opportunity for learning was given and accepted.