No till seeding

[Farmer from Finland]

One interesting thing is NoTill Seeding (is that right)
If i translate from finnish this term it is Direct Seed...but maybe it sounds curious ....

Anyway,i visited shortly exhibition in Tampere,i discussed with Tume salesman,Tume is finnish seedingmachinemanufacturer.They have published new type of machine.

I'm interested of seeding because i own Vaderstad 3 m Rapid and i'm also contracting seedingwork to other farmers.We have prooved in small scale NoTill seeding but results have been more or less bad.

This NoTill seeding is growing area,but also some farmers are disapointed to this method.Sometimes soils are too wet,this year problem was extreemly dry ground specially our area.

How this method is surviving in Sweden and England etc.As i understand yields are high and high yield create lot of straw.....straws create needs to cultivating or ploughing.....or....or...

Any opinions of machines and methods....

Ask FFF

[HPP]

Not so much No-Till discussions anymore here in southerns Sweden.
But Minimum-Till is gaining more and more terrain.
I guess this year, extremely dry and hard soil, has helped this. It´s getting more and more expensive to plow and thus the mini-till is getting more and more interesting.
There´s an interesting farm nearby here. Around 5-600 Ha. They sold the plows!
JD "Mulch Tiller" at the latest 24 hours after the combine. Then a Kongskilde 9m Canadian-built Cultivator just before seeding with Väderstad Rapid (for some reason, don´t know why though).
The manager of this farm claims that so far his costs for herbicides is 20% lower. Sugar content in sugarbeets is higher. Total time for established crop (from combine to seeds in the ground) 50 minutes/ha.
The sugarbeets grow in straw in spring but just before harvesting you just couldn´t see any straw at all.
He estimates that the amount of worms in the soil will be around 4 times as many as when they were plowing.
And, after all, they are doing a pretty good job.

[Xavier]

Here our plows were stopped in the 90.
Now nobody is using it, maybe in one year with problems with herbicide, but one of each ten.
If you want to buy old 2-3-4 furrows plows come to my zone, you can purchase a lot of them.

We are doing only a vertical job, chisel, subsoiler, cultivator, kongskilde, power harrow...
Erosive problems, and less low infiltration were the problems.
But the common tractor here is from 100 to 150hp, and they are more efficient with no plow in our little (as you view them) farms.

[leemsutton]

Direct Drilling/Seeding does not work on all soil types. Here in UK you really need to move all the soil at least once before you drill.

If you have a compaction problem and you direct drill the crop will not grow. You need to remove the compaction to allow the crop to establish itself and grow.

Ploughing is to expensive so most people are using minimal tillage which is moving the soil once before the drill. Some people move the top 3 inches only and some, like ourselves, move it down to 8 inches.

We get from 3.5 - 4 tonnes per acre in wheat using this method. Direct drilling yields anything from 2 - 4 tonnes per acre. But it is very volatile and dangerous.

[Farmer from Finland]

It seems that ploughing is going down.
I sold my ploughs this year.If is absolutely necessary plough i could ask ploughs from my cooperation farms.
My base method at this moment is Stubble cultivator,at this moment Vaderstad 3m.

Xavier,what size of farm is small in Catalonia,i suppose that it's near as we have here or bigger.

HPP,it seems that Vaderstad Carrier is really landing to our fields.Two of my frends have bought Carrier this year.Let see,change is quickly.I met today,again,Vaderstad Scandinavian area salesman he visited Tampere today.They published Carrir 4.25 m model,120 Hp tractor is enough operate it.Let see.....

FFF

[eppie]

We plough 24 to 27 cenrimeter deep.

The contractor where my brother works has a few hectare of sand soil too. They disk harrow it twice, 15-20 cm deep lengthwise and crosswise, and then sow wheat with 3m sowing machine built onto a power harrow. (rotorhead)

In the polders, they plough in autumn, so that the clay can erode by frost and rain during the winter. In spring, they power harrow it one to three times, depending on how hard the lumps are.

But on our sand soils, we plough and sow within the same week.

Hey Xavier, do you have a 3 furrow 18 inch in good shape for sale ?? I had to repair mine with old mower blades and other pieces of scrap.

[Farmer from Finland]

I'm about same line as Lee,it seems that in area where i live direct seed doesn't work,or sometimes it works if all things are in absolutely right position.

Also in special situations ploughing is necessary.
Not normally.

About twenty years ago target was plough as deep as possible recommended deep was 25-30 cm(10 to 12 inc)
But in our area this destryed whole soil structure.

At this moment with cultivator deep in practice is 10-20 centimeter depending how wet soil is etc....

FFF

[Woodbeef]

Hey Triple F,

Besides No-Till over here,there also are other types of non plowing tillage practices. Min-Till,Zone-Till,and Ridge-Till are the ones I hear about.

[leemsutton]

woodbeef,

whats zone til and ridge till. I have never come across them.

[Woodbeef]

Hey Lee,

From what I understand about them(which ain't much)they were developed by farmers who were not having the best of luck with No-Till. I do believe that they are area specific ways of tilling,ie. certain zones or leaving untouched areas. i'll see what I can dig up oi it later for you.

[Fred]

Lee

Ridge till seems to be where the crop is grown on a ridge and all wheelings take place in permenant hollows. Couple of links:

www.ianr.unl.edu/pubs/farmpower/ec780.htm

muextension.missouri.edu/xplor/agguides/agengin/g01652.htm

Just search on google for "ridge till"
Zone till is the soil is only cultivated around the seed/plant. so there is no inter row soil movement.
explanation
No-till and strip-till are similar systems that can be describedas managing the amount, orientation, and distribution of cropand other plant residue on the soil surface year round, whilegrowing crops in narrow slots or tilled strips in previouslyundisturbed residue. More specifically the systems are:No-till:The residue is left undisturbed from harvest throughplanting except for narrow strips that cause minimal soil dis-turbance, such as injecting anhydrous ammonia. No-till isalso referred to as zero-till, slot-till, direct seeding, or slotplant.Strip-till:The residue is often left undisturbed from har-vest through planting except for strips up to a third of therow width. These strips are cleared of residue or tilled forwarming and drying purposes either before or during theplanting operation. This practice is also referred to as row-till, zone-till, strip-till, or fall strip-till.

Taken from
www.nh.nrcs.usda.gov/Conservation%20Practices/Publications/Practice%20sheets/Residue_Management-No-TillandStrip-till.pdf

Seems to be a great wealth of info about.

[JD Kid]

Hi ya FFF
Ok i was a min-till contractor for 6 years in New Zealand ,i'll give ya a run down min-till is NOT working ya paddock but only working ya seed row ie with tine mounted sowing point's ,chisel,inverted T ,etc etc..NO-TILL /or zero till is with disc planters that do not move as much ground ...straw is a prob 2 schools on this 1 chop as fine as ya can or 2 cut low and bale straw off ..as ya say the ground was dry and hard the right tines on a min-till planter will bust that open but as for being to wet if it was to wet for min-till planting it would have been to wet to be working fields anyway,i know guys in NZ who feed cows in the winter (cropping farmers)that like min-till fields as the cows don't muck up the ground as bad as worked ground ..the day of the plow is far from over tho and some times in a min-till program a light working of the top can help IE kill slugs ,work in lime ,help to germant (?)weed seeds to have better kills ..by a light working i'd mean with S tine's up to 10 cm's .. if poor ground sub soiling or draining will help ..
catch ya
JD Kid

[Woodbeef]

Hey Fred,

Thanks for the help!! I sure needed it!!

[eppie]

So, this ridge-till seeding is like the tracked Fendt on the news page, with the GPS system.

My neighbor once tried to no-till his wheat field.
He disk harrowed his wheat stubble with a hired disk harrow, and then cultivated it a few times during winter with an S-tine. They planted the corn the next autumn right into the unplowed ground, and the result was almost disastrous on the wet spots, the soil had a worse structure and the crop was bad.

He asked me what i thought. I said that it would work, if he pulled the heavy cultivator (11 tines on 2 meter width) through it at a depth of 20 to 25 centimeter. He didn't take my advice, i think he should have had a better crop when he did.

So no-till seeding just doesn't work here.
I think a combined subsoiler, or heavy cultivator at 40 cm depth, tines distanced every 40 centimeter, with a disk harrow, an S-tine cultivator and then a seeder will work best here.

[Fred]

Woodbeef

No problems, one day I'll need help:)

Renze

You seem to be describing multi till:) I wouldn't call so many passes as reduced tillage. No tilling is direct drilling in my book, i.e. no fom of cultivation. All of these systems work in certain situations. I think the most important thing is not to perform recreational tillage, that which gives no benifit except giving extra hours on the tractor seat.