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No Till Advice

Seeking some wisdom from the No Till food plot folks. We have made several strides in our food plot program on our lease and have already seen the fruits of that labor. A few of the members are interested in really utilizing a no till method however some questions I have are. Note We have access to a cultipacker, however we do not have a no till drill implement.

Can the no till method truly be effective without the use of a crimper device to terminate the previous forage?

By seeding a fall blend into the standing spring and summer mix do you have to increase seeding rate in order to account for the seed not coming in contact with soil, or would you recommend the broadcast rate but roll over the crop with the cultipacker to aid in seed to soil contact?

Do most people utilize buckwheat in the spring to get the no till method rolling and seed into it that fall?

I can go on and on with questions but that is all I can think of right at this moment. I really appreciate any advice!

Yea, you don't need a crimper. You can always do rye or buckwheat for a summer crop then broadcast your fall seeds then terminate with chemicals. I'd consider running a brush cutter over it too if it's too tall.

Agree with Kydeer1, above. I haven’t done very much no till stuff yet, so I’m still learning as well. One thing I’d point out about buckwheat is, It can be pretty invasive if you let it mature. Depending on what you are planning on planting for a fall crop, it could possibly cause you some issues. I planted brassicas into a plot that was buckwheat earlier in the summer. I didn’t terminate the buckwheat and it went to seed. I disced the plot up and planted the brassicas. They came up fine, as did a ton of buckwheat plants. Buckwheat grows very quickly and shaded the growing brassicas and severely stunted their growth.

I’ve done a lot of no till food plots over the years. Found a used UFT 10 foot no-till drill about 13 years ago and completely went through it. Replaced openers, bearings, etc. It works great, but no till can be tough. Conditions need to be right and hopefully the local weather stations are accurate for planning purposes.

Used it for beans, wheat, and oats so far. Chemical is your friend and I would not recommend a late summer broadcast without a burn down. I like to plant beans in the Spring and then no till wheat/rye in late Sept... leaves a lot of bean plants still standing and you have greens as well.

I tried no till, as in throw and mow, but the hogs ate it all overnight. I mean they ate 100 lbs. of wheat seed overnight. I have now adopted what I call “minimum till”. Your soil may not permit it, but the soils I plant in are easy to get an inch to an inch and a half penetration with my disc gangs almost straight. My personal opinion is that this is not enough turning of the soil to destroy your microbes, earthworms, and other various and sundry things that might be beneficial to your soil. It works for me for seeds like wheat, iron clay peas, soybeans, etc. My clovers or radish seed I just plant on top after I drag the others in. Hogs can’t pick those little seeds up and the bigger ones are buried. That evolved over the course of about 15 years of food plotting and as I said it works for me. YMMV

Alot of no till farms use a 2x6 with a rope attached to each end. Two guys work, each holding a side of rope and putting a foot on the board. Then they walk stomping down each step as they go. It looks like once they get a rythm down a cover crop can be knocked down pretty quickly before its tarped to smother and fully kill the crop.

The soil conservation guy in Ohio told me that I had to continue with the previous farmers no-till method because it was superior to traditional disking. I don’t have a drill so I followed the method I used for years of tilling then row planting my 18 acres of soybeans. No soil erosion issues and I had a spectacular result.

No-till is a great option for planting, and so is traditional tillage IMO. I caution hunters who follow these habitat guys on YouTube to keep an open mind.

My 2c.

We’ve got guys trying 100% no-till farming in my area... not impressed. We’ve had some really wet/cool years and it has been pretty difficult to get the crops in. Hard to get the ground to warm up and dry out if it’s not cracked open. As stated above it can be done, but conditions have to be right. I prefer tillage of some kind... I believe you get a better, more even stand.

Jeff Sturgis is pretty good at explaining it...

We’ve got guys trying 100% no-till farming in my area... not impressed. We’ve had some really wet/cool years and it has been pretty difficult to get the crops in. Hard to get the ground to warm up and dry out if it’s not cracked open. As stated above it can be done, but conditions have to be right. I prefer tillage of some kind... I believe you get a better, more even stand.

This was going to be a no till brassica plot this pst year. I tilled and planted buckwheat on this field and got adequate moisture to get it to this point. I then seeded brassicas into the standing buckwheat on Aug. 1st, rolled down the buckwheat, sprayed the flattened field with glyphosate to make certain that the buckwheat was definitely dead. We got .3” of rain a few days later and the brassicas sprouted. Then it didn’t rain again until September. We were super dry all summer, so there was basically zero subsoil moisture. The brassicas stalled out and produced very little forage. I overseeded it with rye in early September, and we finally got some decent rains, so it wasn’t a total bust, but pretty disappointed with the results. It definitely wasn’t a case study on wether the no till will or won’t work. I’ll probably go the same route on this plot again this year, and hopefully we will get adequate moisture this time. I will probably seed the buckwheat thicker as well. It did do an excellent job on weed control in this plot.

I’m definitely not strictly a no till guy. In fact, I’ve pretty much been exclusively a tillage plotter, but I’ve got a few plots that are definitely good candidates to try the no till applications on. Experimenting with new techniques and plantings is half of the fun!

Thanks to all for the input. Reading about burning down the previous crop was encouraging because I really thought no till could only be done with extensive equipment and absolutely no chemicals. This of course is me alluding to some of who Pat referred to in his post as habitat guys on youtube. I do get a ton of ideas from them and we try to implement what we can from some of the social media deer habitat folks. I appreciate everyone's input and photos. We will see what we can get done this spring.

I didn’t have good luck no till planting brassicas. Did ok with rye.

My grain sorghum and w rye and buckwheat did great I have not decided what I’ll do this year.I’m not brave enough yet to try it on my soybeans.Good luck Lewis

I would get a good sprayer even if it is only a 4 wheeler type. Learn the chemicals and the timing to manage weeds this is crucial to success. I would then find a small John Deere 4 row planter with no til coulters and heavy down pressure springs. I have had great luck with these no til planting corn, beans, sorghum, radishes and sugar beets. They make different seed units that allow wheat, rye and oats although I haven’t tried them. My little planter is set up to plant with liquid fertilizer but that isn’t needed but really nice for corn.

Check out the F/S line of UTV sprayers... high quality.

No til has some tremendous soil building benefits if you are starting with marginal soil. It also conserves moisture-again more important if you have marginal soil. If you have Midwest farm land and reasonable rains good results are relatively easy regardless of method

If you want to throw-n-mow it's very simple; spray gly, spread seed, mow, pray for rain (and no hogs). Broadcast heavy. Mowing isn't necessary, I've had it work just as well without knocking the dead vegetation down. Packing isn't necessary, done many side by side tests and not once has packing showed better results than not packing.

Disclaimer - I am on several habitat forums. I've come to the conclusion that each region responds differently to throw-n-mow. Weather patterns, seed predators, soil structure/health, and seed choice all have an effect on success. What works for one might not work for another. I've been doing it since the mid 90's and have my area figured out pretty well. Even so, I had a plot failure last yr.

T-Roy - that picture looks like a beautiful postcard for hunters. Very nice

Is there a good food plot forum dedicated more to the southeast??

I've researched this topic to death over the past few years and decided on no till plantings as to improve my soils over time. It's probably overkill for my situation and land but it makes me happy so there ya go. I got a Genesis 5 light drill on a 3 point connection. I went from mature timber to a cleared plot for plantings. However the dozers did a number on my topsoil. Year 1 I feel was a success and here are a couple thoughts for what its worth. Get a soil analysis and it all optimized before planting. #1 thing to do IMO. Lime and fertilizer. Second get a good kill on any residual weeds. Chemicals are a necessity especially early on. Maybe after a few years you can cut back if you want. Third no till makes a ton of sense. Keeping roots in the ground year round and even when they die you get that rotting goodness right in the zone you need it for future plantings. I'll agree that traditional tilling sure looks pretty when it's all fine powder and smooth but long term it can hurt drainage, promote compaction, interfere with bacteria and other soil fungi. I didn't have an issue with drilling buckwheat as a summer plot with the drill. Its a great smother crop and will grow on just about any soil. Make sure to terminate it before it seeds though as you can run into issues with your fall crop. Jeff Sturgis has some great videos on it. I terminated it and did a cereal mixture on half and brassica mix on the other and it all came up great. Fertilizer on the brassicas really made a difference. The drill was pretty straight forward with use. Most seeds don't need to be planted deep and those cutters don't have to dig deep even it harder soils. Obviously easier with a heavy drill though. Good thing is just getting a little dirt to cover will increase chances of survival from the environment and most importantly critters. Consider using seeds that are easy to grow and manage as well. Buckwheat, soybeans, and especially cereal rye are your friends. All those are easy to grow----soybeans can be demolished by deer though early on. Its been done for years either way, however I do believe that in the past few years there has been a ton of research trying to preserve farming for years to come. Decreasing farmers overhead and increasing production with soil management. No till fits that bill, however like I mentioned it may be overkill but does make me happy to improve the land and leave it better than when I purchased it.

2X STANDWITTAKNIFE!!!

A lot of other GREAT RESOURCES within Jeff’s videos...

No til has some tremendous soil building benefits if you are starting with marginal soil. It also conserves moisture-again more important if you have marginal soil. If you have Midwest farm land and reasonable rains good results are relatively easy regardless of method

A little rain at the right time will make everyone look like a genius.

Q) "Can the no till method truly be effective without the use of a crimper device to terminate the previous forage?"

A) "Note We have access to a cultipacker"

So you have a crimper. Answered your own question.

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Watch how to do it, step by step. Doing this this year as well.

I'll never disk another plot after doing the No-Till method. You need a cultipacker, a harrow/drag is also a force multiplier for germination.

A little off subject but also not. Can buckwheat be terminated without chemicals? Can you just cut it down low before it goes to seed? And when does it generally go to seed?

BB - You can but "brushhogging" any stalky species usually results in clumping which acts as a killer to any seed you put down under the clumps. crimping and killing with some Gly is by far the best method as it makes a uniform thatch of the seed.

I would think cutting it off with a sickle or disc mower would do the job and alleviate the clumping aspect caused by mowing with a brush mower. Don’t know if you have access to something like that, BB?

It says buckwheat germinates, blooms and is ready to reincorporate in 35-40 days and matures in 70-90 days.

Buckwheat in the flowering stage has a very low C:N ratio so the residue will break down very fast. A simple rotary cutter will terminate buckwheat in the flowering stages with no issues. It will decompose quickly and will not tie up all your N in the soil for the next crop.

Thanks I do have a rotary cutter

Anyone every used a steel lawn roller and just welded some ribs on it to make a crimper? Pull behind the quad kind of deal? Thinking if a guy just welded some cheap angle iron or something like that even shelving material type stuff to the outside of a lawn roller that could make a bang-up crimper even if it only does a narrow swath.

One of the reasons to plant something to eventually kill is off and help build up the OM (Organic Matter) that lays on the surface. You want that stuff. It breaks down, holds moisture, many insects live in it and so on. Don't burn it off - leave it.

Buckwheat does not leave a lot of OM. Better choices are wheats or rye. One of my favorite is rolled horse oats (yeah - the 50lbs for $15 bag of horse feed). It grows fast and deer love it.

Of course there are other reasons to plant things that aren't your intended target plant (like brassica). Some plants act as a nurse crop. That being something that grows up quick, can shade out weeds or provide something for the animals. That's where I think buckwheat fits in well. It grow fast and tall and shades out a lot of things.

I DO NOT recommend killing off your entire plot. Plan ahead. Plant in sections. When/if you kill off an entire plot, everything dies - including the animal traffic.

APauls...I’ve seen a couple of homemade rigs like you’re talking about, on YouTube. Seemed to work decent.

APauls, I may have to give that a try on this old cultipacker. I've got 1" angle iron that could be welded across it pretty easy. I'm finishing up a DIY cultipacker using 12" culvert pipe - not sure how it'll hold up but pretty solid(~400 lbs total).

We've been No Till Drilling on my farm for 10 years, and I had never even heard of a crimper! I have a Great Plains 5 ft drill, and it cuts right through corn stubble and old soybeans and whatever. I didn't have much luck with buckwheat here in SW Tennessee, but we do very well with forage soybeans, corn, wheat, oats, and ryegrain. The small seed box will plant clover seeds okay, but I prefer to till the soil, cultipack it, and broadcast the seeds with a hand spreader. Seems to make a thicker, lusher clover plot. We SHOULD do soil tests, but I haven't done one in many years. We just put down 2-2.5 tons of lime per acre every 3-4 years. And someone asked about how you get fertilizer down into the soil, do you have to till that. No, we never do. We just spread it on the surface within a couple of weeks of planting, and the crops do very well. We use Roundup ready seeds for beans and corn.

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