Ross and Dave have been doing no-till for about 7 years and they have tried corn into beans, and corn into alfalfa.

Dave & Ross’ planter is John Deere 1790 with row cleaners, furrow openers, press wheels, and coulters. He does not fertilize with his planter.

They inject hog manure on their acres.

They do soil sampling every three years. They have all types of soils on their ground to work with. Some of the things that worked well for them have been no-tilling corn into sod on the sandy ground and no-tilling beans on good black ground.

Some of the things that didn’t work out the way they wanted was sometimes clay soils can be too cold for absolute no-till and too much trash from corn residue for no-tilling beans into them. Germination may be uneven because of varying cover and depth of the planting.

One thing that he wish he would have known going into no-till that he has experienced now is that it can be very challenging in cool, wet years and clay soils because especially soybeans do not inoculate well in cool soils. For this reason they select certain hybrids that have early growth and work better in cool soils.

Dave & Ross started implementing no-till because of their landlords’ wishes, and it was faster to be able to get the crop in. If you would like to know more about Dave & Ross Weymillers’ farming operation please feel free to call Ross at (563) 544-4326.