# Excessively tough stalks



## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Ran our vertical tillage tool over the cornstalks before planting beans, it doesn't seem to be doing much to em, I know BT stalks are tougher but I'm wondering as well how much this winter might have played a part? Thinking is this, got cold in the fall, stayed real cold all winter, cold have all the cold preserved the things? Most winters around here anymore you can count on several good thaws, maybe even some rain.


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## Guest (May 12, 2014)

No tilling into some stalks right now. They are tough. Got good down pressure. Seem to be goin in pretty good. Other years they definitly blow apart better when running the drill. This field did very well when corn so it had healthy stalks. Might be some of the reason too


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

I'm running a thirty foot Hiniker, maximum down pressure, still getting a lot of hair pinning. Even have new opener blades on it this year.


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## endrow (Dec 15, 2011)

mlappin said:


> I'm running a thirty foot Hiniker, maximum down pressure, still getting a lot of hair pinning. Even have new opener blades on it this year.


We are thinking about vertical tillage but have not done any . In these parts guys that use VT say do it in the fall not in the spring .


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

endrow said:


> We are thinking about vertical tillage but have not done any . In these parts guys that use VT say do it in the fall not in the spring .


A lot of guys used to do that here, then come spring and a few good downpours and in your more rolling fields all that corn stover ends up in the low spots, plugging tile risers, or in the ditch plugging culverts.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

Don't think I know of one person that's happy with the way the stalks have broken down. We tried no tilling into the stubble, that didn't work at all. Tried discing and planting, that worked better but still not satisfied. Now we have hit it with the stalk chopper again and the suckers just explode. It's the winter that keeps on giving unfortunately. What we did get ripped with the Tebben or the WilRich is pretty good shape, but didn't get it all worked. When you get something figured out that works, let me know.


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

Yeah ours suck too, no-tilled 110 acres of beans in before the rain. A lot of pinching and way too many beans on top of the ground. Fortunately, several days of cloudy and rain and a lot of them on top are going to sprout and grow. I think if it would have been a little drier soil conditions and sunny and less humid when I planted, I could have done a better job.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Well our first problem was Father read a article claiming to that running your corn head higher and leaving more stalk catches more snow. Which i does, but more snow equals less frost. I've made a unilateral decision thats the last time he does that.

I could have started planting again yesterday but they needed some sunshine, yesterday they were tough enough all it would have hair pinned.


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## barnrope (Mar 22, 2010)

Spring tillage is not ever really great. Fall is the time for that. I moulboard plowed and chisel plowed last fall and haven't had any issues with stalks. The neighbor is no tilling beans into corn stalks. Hope it works for him. I am not about to do it.


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

barnrope said:


> Spring tillage is not ever really great. Fall is the time for that. I moulboard plowed and chisel plowed last fall and haven't had any issues with stalks. The neighbor is no tilling beans into corn stalks. Hope it works for him. I am not about to do it.


Well, if we would have plowed our corn stalks under last fall, I know we would have already had the beans planted. Only problem, the field would have been in the Mississippi delta!


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## haybaler101 (Nov 30, 2008)

I will take no-till beans in standing corn stalks any day over any other tillage system. Better stand, better yield no matter what.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

haybaler101 said:


> I will take no-till beans in standing corn stalks any day over any other tillage system. Better stand, better yield no matter what.


Yea it's one of those here/there things.

A lot tried notill here includeing myself and have gone back to fall tillage.With fall tillage here we get more freeze/thaw cycles to mellow out the soil.We have clay in our soil so it helps to mellow it.If you have stalks and get snowcover you don't get as much freeze/thawing threw the winter.You will also end up with a mat of trash that will prevent it from drying in the spring and have a hard time getting it planted.

A lot of bean stuble here is even tilled in the fall.If you don't you can have a mat of leaves/trash and it just seals up and won't dry out.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Definitely a here/there thing. Most that still do fall tillage is stalks only here, the few that do fall tillage on bean stubble usually have some pretty nasty gullies by spring. If our neighbor up the ditch doesn't quit with the fall tillage one of these days were gonna have most of his top soil on our land. Clean the ditch and spread it out in the low spots.


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## barnrope (Mar 22, 2010)

Yes it is a here and there thing. My conditions are similar to Cy's. About 70% of the stalks are chiseled, 25% moldboard plowed and maybe 5% is left alone around here, and probably 75% of the bean ground is chiseled, disced or some other tillage pass is done.

Some guys run a digger (field cultivator) through bean ground in the fall so they have something to do. They say it gets them in a few days earlier in the spring. I call that "recreational tillage".

It can make snow black pretty fast when the wind blows.


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

In our area, deep tillage is almost a must. Strip tilling is starting to catch on, but our ground just does not warm up with too much cover. We tried no tilling years ago, and worked so well we bought another moldboard plow...


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

stack em up said:


> In our area, deep tillage is almost a must. Strip tilling is starting to catch on, but our ground just does not warm up with too much cover. We tried no tilling years ago, and worked so well we bought another moldboard plow...


I have a JD 750 no till drill.I bought it to no till beans into some rougher ground we farm.The only place I seen a improvement on yield was on the sand.I have about 3 acres of sand out of 800.Yields suffered on the rest of it.

The drill is a PIA to work on and grease.I'm probably going to sell it or trade it off.I currently use it for seeding alf/grass and interseeding.Maybe go with a lighter drill or rig up a air seeder on my packer??


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## stack em up (Mar 7, 2013)

How big of a drill? We need something to cover our acres on a limited schedule. We used a 750 drill after discing stalks and were pleasantly surprised. Straight no till just doesn't seem to work in the gumbo we call farmland.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

stack em up said:


> How big of a drill? We need something to cover our acres on a limited schedule. We used a 750 drill after discing stalks and were pleasantly surprised. Straight no till just doesn't seem to work in the gumbo we call farmland.


20',2 pt,7.5" spaceing,markers,grass seed,

Needham seed firming wheels,Closing wheel updates from Shoup.(about $3200 for both)

I have a 2 bar mulcher for it also.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

Have lots of gumbo here as well, needs extensively tiled. Wet ground is hard ground, wet ground is also cold ground. But given the difference in growing seasons I could see heavy ground just staying cold too long in the more northern parts of the country.

We run a vertical tillage tool over the stalks now before planting beans. Plant corn with sixteen but plant beans with 12 so can't always get 15" rows to work well unless something is done before hand. Seriously talking about getting rid of the vertical tillage tool and going with a 40' John Deere air drill so we can skip the vertical tillage altogether and just plant two 15" rows between the 30" corn rows.


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

endrow said:


> We are thinking about vertical tillage but have not done any . In these parts guys that use VT say do it in the fall not in the spring .


Actually we are going to try to get away from it. Plan is to find a 40 foot John Deere air drill so it matches the 16 row planter and just plant between the rows. Do that some now, but a 30 foot bean planter doesn't always match up to a 40 corn planter. Keeping our 25 foot chisel plow that we converted to a coulter cart just for times like now when we don't have time to wait on mother nature to dry it out.

If you want to try some vertical tillage without a huge investment, try something like this: http://www.yetterco.com/products?productId=170 Which is what we did to our chisel plow.

I actually built our 25 foot chisel plow, took our 16 foot White and another 12 foot White and cut the twelve foot in half then had a local shop form some hinges for it. So we had extra shanks around and re spaced them down to foot centers, blades are all run on six inch spacing that way. Several different brands out there, we found that replacing the original wavy blades with turbo blades like a turbo till uses is more effective in our ground.


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