A good strip starts with the combine
For farmers looking to maintain the benefits of vertical tillage while enjoying some of the soil health impacts of no-till, strip tillage is a popular option. With strip tillage, the seedbed for next season starts in the fall.
“Strip-till has been around 30 years, but now we’re understanding microbiology, soil health, carbon and what they all mean,” says Jodi DeJong-Hughes, regional Extension educator for soil at the University of Minnesota.
Start early
Creating a good strip, starts with the combine. “It is important the combine spreads the chaff evenly,” DeJong-Hughes says. “If it doesn’t, the strip tiller and planter will have to deal with different levels of residue.”
Strip-till works best if done early, says Randall Reeder, a retired Extension agricultural engineer from Ohio State University.
“You want to get it done while the ground is still fairly dry,” he says. “For instance, if you waited until after harvest, then the odds of having more wet ground by Thanksgiving increase.”
Today’s strip-till machines can run coulters, shanks or a combination of both. Loose soil is piled back into the row to create a berm and is often followed with a crumbler.
Clods on top, aren’t really an issue, Reeder says, because the freezing and thawing will break them up.
“The shank will till the soil in more of a V shape and you can band-apply your fertilizer,” DeJong-Hughes adds. “If you have very high or low pH or your phosphorus is tied up easily, that band is nice because there is less soil contact and less phosphorus tie-up.”
Working nutrients into the soil also helps to prevent runoff during the winter and following spring. DeJong-Hughes says the coulter system generally spreads fertilizers more evenly through the tilled area of a field by chopping up residue and incorporating it throughout the strip.
Capture water
A benefit of strip tillage is water infiltration. The standing residue between strips act like straws helping rain wick into the field.
“A study out of Colorado compared water infiltration with double disking versus strip-till,” DeJong-Hughes says. “In the first year of strip-till they were able to infiltrate up to 3" of water an hour while the double-disked field was only a half an inch.”
Running fall strips into standing covers helps build soil health.
“You have a loosened seedbed to plant in, and you’ve got the benefit of firm no-till soil,” Reeder says.
A challenge of strip-till is keeping crops in the same row every year. Corn root balls can cause issues.
“If farmers want to control their wheel traffic, they can use twin-row soybeans,” DeJong-Hughes says. “Plant the soybeans on each side of the old corn stalks, and the following year they can go back to the old corn row to plant corn.”