In Jeremy’s first article on his transition to conservation tillage, he talked about the many reasons that compelled the change—labor needs, expenses, and better soil health. Now, we’re going to dig further into Jeremy’s equipment setup for strip tillage—the machines, the need to closely manage field operations, and the challenges that come with only tilling small strips of land across your fields.

A Fast Take on Jeremy’s Blu-Jet

I had an advantage when I was starting out; I had a neighbor who started strip tilling three or four years before us. He also worked for an equipment dealer in Fort Dodge—I bought our strip-till bar from him. Our start in strip till was a perfect example of the power of networking—acquiring the necessary knowledge from other farmers. He offered a ton of tips and tricks when we were getting started.

As far as my equipment goes, I have a twelve-row Blu-Jet strip-till bar. Basically, it’s more or less a glorified anhydrous bar. I’ve got [Yetter] SharkTooth trash rippers on the front, which are very sharp and aggressive. And I’ve got wavy coulters straight behind them. The coulters are what do the bulk of the work in terms of tillage. Behind those are Mole knives, which have a faceplate on the bottom of them that is designed to lift and throw more dirt. Behind the Mole knives are closing wheels to help build the strip-till berms. The berming isn’t a big deal in the spring, but in the fall you want the strips bermed up a bit because the soil will settle a bit over the winter as the air pockets work their way out of the ground. The goal is to have the surface flat, at ground level, in spring to plant into. 

We generally do our strip tilling in fall, but there have been years when we’ve had to make the strips in the spring. For this, we have rolling baskets behind those closing wheels, which help push some of that air out of the soil and flatten the strip down a little bit for planting. We don’t use the rolling baskets when we’re making strips in fall because you can count on the natural subsidence or sinking of the soil over the winter. 

Planter Adjustments for Strip Till and No Till

For planting we have a separate John Deere 12-row planter. We haven’t outfitted it with anything special for strip till. It works whether we make strips in the fall, as I like to do, or in the spring. When we do make strips in the spring, the soil is soft and mellow; it’s some of the nicest planting conditions anybody has ever planted into. 

We have some old finger-style trash whipper wheels on the front of the planter that we’ve had on there since the day we bought it. If there are any chunks of dirt left, they’ll knock them out of the way and move just a little bit of dirt. And then the row unit rides so nicely over those strips; it’s really a breeze planting corn. 

Now, I said we didn’t make any adjustments on the planter for strip till, but we have modified the planter for no tilling. And I don’t take the time to switch hardware between no tilling and strip tilling; I use the same setup for both. I kept the trash whipper wheels on the front that came with the planter. Now that’s been an argument around here—maybe I should switch to a different tool for the no-till side. For the closing system, rather than the traditional rubber closing wheels from John Deere, I’ve gone to a Copperhead Ag spiked closing wheel to try and help break any sidewall compaction and just loosen the ground up around the seed a little bit. In a no-till environment, the top layer can still be kind of hard. So a spiked closing wheel helps loosen that ground up around the seed. And as one more safety mechanism to make sure we get that seed trench closed I run a short drag chain behind each row. If push comes to shove, those will pull a little dirt over the rows to cover those beans up. 

Like I mentioned, I don’t bother to switch planter hardware for strip tilling. I wouldn’t need the spiked closing wheels for strip till—or the drag chains—but I haven’t found that they bring any negative effects. Yes, companies promote those for use in tough conditions, but I’ve found they work well in ideal conditions too. 

Weather Considerations with Strip Till

Speaking of conditions, I get a lot of questions about conservation tillage and weather. Are you going to have to plant later? Does the soil take longer to warm up? That sort of thing. With strip till it doesn’t really matter; you have those strips of bare dirt that are exposed to the sun. I think the soil actually warms up a little faster than even conventional tillage. I won’t say it’s necessarily “better” than how the ground warms up for planting with conventional tillage, but at least it’s the same. Those strips will still warm up and be effective—in good condition—for planting at the same time. 

For no till, on our farm we’ve always planted beans second. By the time we get around to the bean fields, it has been warm enough that we haven’t worried about it. But now I’m looking at planting beans first next year. A lot more people are starting to plant beans first and there’s some newer research that shows that planting beans early has positive yield results. What we’re learning from the research is that beans are much more tolerant of colder temperatures than we ever realized. So long as the fields aren’t sopping wet, which could cause disease issues, I don’t think that colder temperatures are going to be an issue with no till. 

I could see the colder temps being an issue with no-till corn, though. With no-till corn, the seed would not warm up as quickly as it would in the ground that has been strip tilled or conventional tilled. You’d be two, three, four days behind for sure. 

Strip Placement for Optimum Growth

As far as placing the strips each year, it’s critical to have good guidance lines made, even on the boundaries around each field. I do have markers on my planter, but I very rarely use them.  I’m generally planting corn following beans, so I’m making strips into bean stubble. Usually I make the strips right on top of the bean rows for a couple of reasons. One, I’m not trying to make strips into tire tracks. There is more soil compaction beneath tire tracks, so I try to avoid those for making strips. And two, there were plants growing right beneath the strips last year. There’s root mass down there, and this is where the soil biology was the most active. So this is where there will probably be more nutrient conversion happening and more nutrients available for the corn plants. That might be stretching a bit for some guys, but I think there’s validity in this. 

Corn-on-Corn Considerations

Of course, we now combine across the bean rows, so that changes the game somewhat. Basically, I just look at the quality of my strips, and if I’m not happy with how they’re turning out, I move them over four inches one way or the other. I know what I’ve just said, but there have been years where I have made strips right down the middle of last year’s rows, not typically on bean stubble, but it can happen. 

Now, if you’re strip tilling into corn stalks for a corn-on-corn scenario, you’re not going to create strips right on top of the corn stalks. On corn,  I slide over four to six inches from last year’s rows. Your main goal is to get far enough from the row that, when your planter comes through, the gauge wheels are riding smoothly and not riding on top of the old rows to mess up your planting depth. 

And, this distance from last year’s rows also keeps you out of the majority of the wheel track. When we first started strip tilling, we went smack dab between the rows. In other words, we’d slide over fifteen inches on thirty-inch rows. But then, as we began to better understand what we were doing, we learned that we were not making the best strips because of the compaction in the center of the wheel tracks. So, we learned how to use our guidance to shift around and find the distance from the old rows where we could make the best strips for next year. 

Trash Problems with Strip Till Bars

Most farmers in my area (north central Iowa) are on thirty-inch rows for corn. And we’re generally all doing the same thing: strip till ahead of corn and no till ahead of beans. For guys that want to narrow things up, especially if they’re going to be strip tilling in last year’s corn stalks, managing residue can be a real challenge on a strip till bar.  

I had a neighbor who built his own inline strip till bar. He took an old row-crop cultivator, what you would use in the summer to cultivate corn or beans, and he mounted strip-till units on it. The first year he used it, he thought it was a giant dump rake. The trash just wouldn’t flow through the machine, even on thirty-inch rows. The rows would throw trash at each other, and the trash would just pile up between the rows and plug. So an inline strip till bar in heavy residue can cause problems. 

Think about a field cultivator, with its shanks spaced out front to back and side to side to allow flow through it. The same concept applies to a strip till bar in corn stalks or a high-residue environment. A bar that has the row units staggered front to back provides much better trash flow through the machine. You’ll find both staggered and in-line units on the market. My Blu-Jet is staggered, for example. I believe that Soil Warriors are inline. However, those are so big and heavy they can probably handle heavy residue fairly well. Kuhn is also inline, I believe.  

Depth Control Across the Bar

There are a few other considerations when it comes to making good-quality strips. Our strip-till bar has folding wings, and one of our initial struggles was getting those wing units down into the ground at a consistent depth across the bar. We learned that if we raised the coulter units up on the outside two rows that would force the Mole knives to do more work; this ended up pulling the wings down a bit more into the ground. 

I also raised the hitch point on our tractor to force the back end of the strip-till bar down a bit. The outside rows on the outside of the wings were the farthest back units on the whole bar, so this slight adjustment up front—along with our coulter adjustments—helped us get consistent depth across the bar. 

Straight Tracking When Making Strips

Another challenge is getting the strip-till bar to travel straight behind you as you’re making strips. They have a tendency to dogtail—where one side of the bar pulls harder than the other. When you get to the end of the field and turn around, you have to make sure that you’re thirty inches from strip to strip. With a planter you don’t think about it much. But with a strip till bar, it will pull a little bit differently depending on soil conditions. The first couple of rounds, I’m getting out and measuring pass to pass, trying to figure out what that distance is, so every time I turn around I’m exactly thirty inches apart. With my monitor, I can enter what it calls an “offset”, and I just keep adjusting that number until I get the distance I want. 

I check the amount of offset I need to enter on every field, because it’s crazy how much it can change from field to field. The main factor is probably soil type and maybe soil moisture. 

Looking Ahead to Better Soil Health

As Jeremy has shared with us, there are many factors to consider when starting on a strip till journey. For Jeremy, it was another local farmer who helped him navigate the transition to strip till, from choosing his strip till bar to laying out the basics of making high-quality strips. In Jeremy’s next article, he talks more about the transition to strip till and better soil health and some of the management decisions you need to make in order to make conservation tillage work for your farm.