220 plowing

Nice picture. Is that corn

That doesn't look like corn. It appears to be another grass of some sort.

The man must have had a serious itch to roll some smoke and smell the earth as it is turned over... and drive that 220.
 Plowing down a heavy stand of giant sweet clover works for soil building too.
 Many years ago, I seen a picture of a fellow plowing down sorgum-sudan that was taller than his tractor... always wondered how much of that crop would decompose before the next crop got planted.

Nice looking tractor

we used to plow under about any type of green stuff, makes great manure for the ground. another type of soil husbandry that the big farmers won't do!

yep!

victory, are you able to pull off no till over there, or more of a vertical tillage or what?

I remember sowing sweet clover with oats to provide a carry over cover crop which was plowed the following spring. Since sweet clover is a legume it fixed nitrogen in the ground to be used by the corn crop. If you had a wet spring that clover could be as high as your front axle when plowed. That ground was by far the most mellow ground you had that season. It also was probably the best yielding corn you had as well.

not all soil types can make a good crop with no-til. might work 1-2 years, then you need to do some breaking up on the soil! anything you can plow under makes good humis and builds the soil nutrients back up. diesel fuel is a lot cheaper than buying all the commercial made nutrients and fertilizers, but not as fast nor convenient. the big farmers around here are finding this out now. they wouldn't listen to the older farmers! said that was the old way of doing things and what they are doing now is the new way! but now they are pulling the deep tillage tools back out of the trees to use again!

Tbone95 wrote: victory, are you able to pull off no till over there, or more of a vertical tillage or what?

Little bit of everything to be honest. We no tilled 200 or so acres this year. One guy does well with strip till in the east edge of county. I would like to try strip till but got to much tied up with my hodge podge I got going. The soil finisher sees a lot of acres it just what if any that leads it. I'm not anti tillage I'm just not a fan of the moldboard plow nothing wrong with a chisel plow or soil saver. For us it was like night and day difference going from a moldboard plow to soil saver. I got a soil saver with a pretty nice leveler to follow the 7580.

Night and day difference in 10 miles... west side of the county has sand that when the rain stops, it dries out, grows some fair sand oaks... east of them the fellows have loam/sand and can get out 2 weeks before I can, unless I am going to plant tractors...I am where it seems every field I have has draws and soft spots with clay right to the surface on most of it.  if you get a crop established in the clay, it seems to do good, so I am glad I am not on that droughty sand.
  Do about the same as you, plow sod, disk or chisel where theres little trash to bury.  Wanted to do deep tillage but takes hp to go through the clay.
  also if you bust up the clay and in a real wet fall, you will go through to the plow depth and sit and spin on the undisturbed clay. ...
  We use to plow down a crop along with a good slather of manure before planting corn. Rotation was 2 years corn, then oats or wheat/barly with alfalfa/clover/tim/alsike/ladino mix and would run the hay for 3-4 years.  Sometimes we combined the grain, and sometimes cut it off in dough stage  and then baled it. and if weedy, cut it off before the weeds went to seed, if the weeds had green seed, baled the oats on the damp side where it would go into a heat. boy the cows liked the tobaccoy carmal smell.
 We would try to combine some clover and alfalfa seed every few years to have our own to use.