Is no till the only way to save soils?

[Dan Powell]

So if no till isn't working for some people due to lack of management ability, difficult crops or inappropriate soils then what is the solution?

Is min till 2" deep so bad.

What about shallow ploughing on lighter soils?

Grass leys in the rotation.

What is the least worst alternative?

 

[The_Swede]

Interesting piece in @Andy Howard 's Nuffield blog detailing Friedrich Wenz's farm. All arable and mintill from what I can see, also biodynamic. Difference in appearance of his relative to neighbours ploughed soil was startling. Leaving aside the biodynamic element this clearly showed me that considerate shallow mintill needn't harm soils, it could in fact improve them.

 

[SilliamWhale]

No is the answer to the question. No till is very flawed really and we will eventually evolve away from it to something else (unlikely to go "back" to older technology like ploughing because of its drawbacks and its not the way technology goes)

But whats the problem with no till? Its pretty easy really.

 

[marco]

Dan, from reading some books from newman turner (fertility pastures) and robert elliot (the clifton park system of farming and laying down land to grass) from the early 1900s, the way these guys turned around degraded and unproductive soils was to sow them down to deep rooted herbal leys for 3 to 5 years to build organic matter and nutrient cycling. If a field is burnt out going straight into direct drilling isn't going to cut it. maybe a season long multi species cover combined with grazing would be enough to kick start the system.

 

[Feldspar]

I think a decent amount of muck probably does more than no-till. Cultivation with manure can be better than no-till producing poor crops.

 

[spin cycle]

the plough is mightier than the sword....or the pen

rotation,muck and stock will aid soils more IMO

 

[SilliamWhale]

The thing you need to remember with muck is your basically taking nutrients from one place and putting them in another.

 

[DrWazzock]

Livestock and grass are the answer here. Messy and difficult but that's life.

 

[Surgery]

The thing you need to remember with muck is your basically taking nutrients from one place and putting them in another.

Yes , out of the shed

 

[Tim May]

If no till means that you get poor establishment and plant cover, and a tiny bit of tillage helps that especially while things are changing then there is defiantly a place for shallow tillage, just not to much and not all the time. We've had a no till drill on the farm since '96 but we'll still use a bit of cultivation when needed, its just happening less and less as the soils and our understanding of the system improve. You can still do a lot of wrong things within no till, like leave the ground with nothing growing in it for too long ( i don't now how long is too long) but it is possible with tillage equipment like the system camelian to have something growing in the soil all the time thats got to be a bit better. So I think the question is to simple, because it depends on the type of no till system, and the type of till system being compared.

 

[Dan Powell]

No is the answer to the question. No till is very flawed really and we will eventually evolve away from it to something else (unlikely to go "back" to older technology like ploughing because of its drawbacks and its not the way technology goes)

But whats the problem with no till? Its pretty easy really.

The problem is that it's incredibly limiting in what will and won't work. It feels like the no till tail is wagging the rotation dog if that makes sense.

For example I have a two year grass ley which I will be grazing until the end of October and it would be simple to plough that and put a first wheat or whatever in but no till wheat in early November is a big no no so it needs to be beans.

I'd like to grow maize for neighbouring dairy farms but that's tricky too.

Rape does OK but difficult to establish and then the following wheat is a nightmare for slugs.

I have used a ridiculous amount of pellets this year as there's so many slugs.

Beans are OK but low profit.

Catch crops always establish faster with tillage in my experience.

When it works it works well, but I'm just wondering if a bit of tillage and muck would be as good for my soil and more profitable.

 

[Will Blackburn]

For example I have a two year grass ley which I will be grazing until the end of October and it would be simple to plough that and put a first wheat or whatever in but no till wheat in early November is a big no no so it needs to be beans.

I've switched to grass roundupped early and/or beans to avoid frit fly and leather jackets, after the loss of chlorpyriphos which was difficult to time to catch both pests, and probably made the slugs worse by eliminating beneficials?

 

[mikep]

The problem is that it's incredibly limiting in what will and won't work. It feels like the no till tail is wagging the rotation dog if that makes sense.

For example I have a two year grass ley which I will be grazing until the end of October and it would be simple to plough that and put a first wheat or whatever in but no till wheat in early November is a big no no so it needs to be beans.

I'd like to grow maize for neighbouring dairy farms but that's tricky too.

Rape does OK but difficult to establish and then the following wheat is a nightmare for slugs.

I have used a ridiculous amount of pellets this year as there's so many slugs.

Beans are OK but low profit.

Catch crops always establish faster with tillage in my experience.

When it works it works well, but I'm just wondering if a bit of tillage and muck would be as good for my soil and more profitable.

Why do you let no till rule your farming life. It is simply a way of establishing a crop quickly and one that can avoid the regular breaking up of soil ecosystems. It is not a regulated system such as organic for some it works all the time for others a bit of intervention is needed.
Please remember it is merely the servant and not the master.

 

[Two Tone]

I have tried no-till a couple of times here and it hasn't worked. But I have to say that it was more likely the years we tried it that was the reason why it didn't work.

We have tremendously variable soil types within every field and it can be very difficult to get a machine setting that works properly for every type, especially on the heavy clays

We used to be a plough and combi-drill based system. Granted that we sometimes have to fit a power harrowing in between plough and combi, but it always worked well. Then we got a Sumo Trio to replace the plough and that worked well in most years, but not every one. Moreton-in-Marsh is very aptly named and a lot of this land can get very wet, very quickly.

With regard saving soils, it's more the case of trying to keep them in good condition and the best way we have found so far is to use steel and tractor diesel to keep them in good condition

There is no doubt that we have seen an increase in Blackgrass since we started using the Trio. So we started rotational ploughing ahead of the 2nd white straw crop. If we have managed to control BG in a Rape crop, why plough seed up to the top up again? But after a 1st wheat we needed to bury BG seed ahead of the 2nd.

However, because it was so wet last season, we didn't get a good enough BG control in the Rape (Or Beans!!) so this year I have ploughed the lot. The 3 months or relatively dry summer from July to Sept have helped put the soil back into reasonable condition and it ploughed really well!

I'm still very interested in finding out more about no-till. It will work on certain soil types really well. I am slightly concerned that it is a seed merchant hay-day regards cover crops and I wonder if it will turn out to be a fashion in the same way min-til became one.

Ploughing the lot this year, certainly highlighted the tremendous soil variations within each field we have here. But I can't remember an Autumn where I have been so happy about the conditions in which we drilled. Using a combi is easy to adjust to different soil types. All you need to do is alter forward speed and it is easy to see where you can do so as you go along.

The most important bit IMO is that you have to be very flexible as to your preferred cultivation method each year and have the machinery to be able to use each system. If not, you must have one system that you know will work every time and that might have to be a plough.

 

[martian]

Of course no-till works on all soils. If there was no humans about, there would be no tillage and yet there would be bountiful growth on all our soils. But it wouldn't be neat rows of monoculture wheat. Round here it would be oak forest, so what you have to ask yourself is how much work I am prepared to put in to fight nature and stop it turning back into a forest? By far the easiest way is to get animals to do it for you, grazing permanent pastures/herbal leys, but as Dr W says above, it's not everyone's idea of fun. The next easiest (here anyway) is no-till, but you need to work with nature a bit with rotations and timings. There's not a lot wrong with shallow cultivation, except it's blackgrass's idea of heaven

 

[SilliamWhale]

The problem is that it's incredibly limiting in what will and won't work. It feels like the no till tail is wagging the rotation dog if that makes sense.

For example I have a two year grass ley which I will be grazing until the end of October and it would be simple to plough that and put a first wheat or whatever in but no till wheat in early November is a big no no so it needs to be beans.

I'd like to grow maize for neighbouring dairy farms but that's tricky too.

Rape does OK but difficult to establish and then the following wheat is a nightmare for slugs.

I have used a ridiculous amount of pellets this year as there's so many slugs.

Beans are OK but low profit.

Catch crops always establish faster with tillage in my experience.

When it works it works well, but I'm just wondering if a bit of tillage and muck would be as good for my soil and more profitable.

I'd agree that no till tail does wag the rotation dog, its one of the big things about it. But you can chose to make that work in your favour or disadvantage. So for example if you plough your grass field the probability is you will need to plough it again or at least cultivate it the next year for the next crop. But you could gamble and drill wheat in November into grass and it may come well or you could bring it forward 2 weeks and maybe reduce your gamble a bit? So whichever way you look there will be trade offs.

I agree a little bit of tillage helps catch crops but also depends on how much you value the old crop root system and surface structure for subsequent tractor wheelings and water absorption etc. Its an important thing for me longer term as it gives me more flexibility for getting on the land, more worm burrows and more "bounceability" after wheelings and so i'm happy to take a trade off of a smaller catch crop sometimes for a more resilient soil surface. I'm never happy with smaller cash crop yields in general though.

 

[SilliamWhale]

I have tried no-till a couple of times here and it hasn't worked. But I have to say that it was more likely the years we tried it that was the reason why it didn't work.

We have tremendously variable soil types within every field and it can be very difficult to get a machine setting that works properly for every type, especially on the heavy clays

We used to be a plough and combi-drill based system. Granted that we sometimes have to fit a power harrowing in between plough and combi, but it always worked well. Then we got a Sumo Trio to replace the plough and that worked well in most years, but not every one. Moreton-in-Marsh is very aptly named and a lot of this land can get very wet, very quickly.

With regard saving soils, it's more the case of trying to keep them in good condition and the best way we have found so far is to use steel and tractor diesel to keep them in good condition

There is no doubt that we have seen an increase in Blackgrass since we started using the Trio. So we started rotational ploughing ahead of the 2nd white straw crop. If we have managed to control BG in a Rape crop, why plough seed up to the top up again? But after a 1st wheat we needed to bury BG seed ahead of the 2nd.

However, because it was so wet last season, we didn't get a good enough BG control in the Rape (Or Beans!!) so this year I have ploughed the lot. The 3 months or relatively dry summer from July to Sept have helped put the soil back into reasonable condition and it ploughed really well!

I'm still very interested in finding out more about no-till. It will work on certain soil types really well. I am slightly concerned that it is a seed merchant hay-day regards cover crops and I wonder if it will turn out to be a fashion in the same way min-til became one.

Ploughing the lot this year, certainly highlighted the tremendous soil variations within each field we have here. But I can't remember an Autumn where I have been so happy about the conditions in which we drilled. Using a combi is easy to adjust to different soil types. All you need to do is alter forward speed and it is easy to see where you can do so as you go along.

The most important bit IMO is that you have to be very flexible as to your preferred cultivation method each year and have the machinery to be able to use each system. If not, you must have one system that you know will work every time and that might have to be a plough.

What drill did you use when no tilling that gave you lot of trouble in a getting it to adapt to soil types?

 

[Two Tone]

What drill did you use when no tilling that gave you lot of trouble in a getting it to adapt to soil types?

There were 2 drills we tried. The Moore and the Claydon. The reason they didn't work particularly well was it just so happened that the 2 years we gave it a go were particularly wet years. Worked well enough on better draining ground but not good on the heavy wet stuff. We just ended up with backward and stunted crops.

 

[doorknob]

Kit, or as we call it, equipment, designs are one ting that is severally lacking when discussing all soils in all areas.

It's like using an adjustable wrench and a vise grip to rebuild an engine. You might get a few of the easy bolts out, but you're going to need a proper tool set to get the job done and done in any sort of working fashion.

Here, we have bean pickers that pick beans. Berry pickers that pick berries. Nut harvesters to pickup nuts. Combines to harvest grains. We even use a row planter to plant corn, beans and vegetables, yet use the same grain drill for planting all other crops. How can this work? Well, it is the disk ripper, plough, disk, harrow and rollers that prepare the soil so that that one drill can do the job.

In no-till/dd there is no plough or disk. You're expecting the drill/planter to do too much in all soils and all climates, planting all crops. Of course we're going to hear of more failures and more "dd wont work here" stories.

Just look at the Mzuri or the Sumo dts planters out now. A few years ago they were like the wolf walking outside the sheep pasture. Everyone had their gun loaded and their finger on the safety. Now they are accepted tools and have opened up the conservation method to a lot of folks that used to not be able to make it work.

How I wish I had even 10% of the brands and models of planters available here that you folks do over there. Here, what few factory models are available, are built solely for the mid section of the country. The corn and soybean belts.

Often too much emphasis is placed on "management" and not enough on kit design. Sure, it does take a different management approach, but so what if the crop is doomed from the get go because it could not be put in right. Some get on great with the deere 750a. Others get on with the dts. There could not be two more different bits than those two. Just an hour drive south of me the deere single disk works fine. But I have far too high of failure rate with it. I do however have great luck with the tine seeder designs and even better with the Mzuri or Sumo dts type systems. I have to cobble together my own version of them as I do not have access to buying those tools here.

But if I were relegated to using only the deere, I would go back to the plough. Kit design plays as big of role in my ability to continue no-til/dd as does learning the new management decisions.

 

[E_B]

Kit, or as we call it, equipment, designs are one ting that is severally lacking when discussing all soils in all areas.

It's like using an adjustable wrench and a vise grip to rebuild an engine. You might get a few of the easy bolts out, but you're going to need a proper tool set to get the job done and done in any sort of working fashion.

Here, we have bean pickers that pick beans. Berry pickers that pick berries. Nut harvesters to pickup nuts. Combines to harvest grains. We even use a row planter to plant corn, beans and vegetables, yet use the same grain drill for planting all other crops. How can this work? Well, it is the disk ripper, plough, disk, harrow and rollers that prepare the soil so that that one drill can do the job.

In no-till/dd there is no plough or disk. You're expecting the drill/planter to do too much in all soils and all climates, planting all crops. Of course we're going to hear of more failures and more "dd wont work here" stories.

Just look at the Mzuri or the Sumo dts planters out now. A few years ago they were like the wolf walking outside the sheep pasture. Everyone had their gun loaded and their finger on the safety. Now they are accepted tools and have opened up the conservation method to a lot of folks that used to not be able to make it work.

How I wish I had even 10% of the brands and models of planters available here that you folks do over there. Here, what few factory models are available, are built solely for the mid section of the country. The corn and soybean belts.

Often too much emphasis is placed on "management" and not enough on kit design. Sure, it does take a different management approach, but so what if the crop is doomed from the get go because it could not be put in right. Some get on great with the deere 750a. Others get on with the dts. There could not be two more different bits than those two. Just an hour drive south of me the deere single disk works fine. But I have far too high of failure rate with it. I do however have great luck with the tine seeder designs and even better with the Mzuri or Sumo dts type systems. I have to cobble together my own version of them as I do not have access to buying those tools here.

But if I were relegated to using only the deere, I would go back to the plough. Kit design plays as big of role in my ability to continue no-til/dd as does learning the new management decisions.

I'm pretty sure mzuri would get a machine out to you if you had the budget to make it happen. I imagine they'd love a machine working in the US. They have some in New Zealand, although admittedly through an importer.