COMMENTS ABOUT DIRECT SEEDING IN LOW RAINFALL REGIONS

      There are very few rules that apply to successfully starting a crop, whether under cultivation or by direct seeding.  a--place the seed where it can imbibe moisture when ground temperature is conducive to seed germination.  (Traditional thinking meant that this required seed-soil contact as paramount.  New thinking is that soil humidity is paramount and seed-soil contact has importance but is secondary) b--place the seed so the sprout can reach the surface, and the root can gain purchase in moist soil.  Those are the basic rules.
       With the root in moist soil and the shoot receiving light the plant becomes a manufacturing facility. Take either the light or moisture away from the plant and manufacturing shuts down.  Those of us in commercial dry land farming don't have control over the light, and traditionally we haven't felt that we have any control over the moisture.  Using the study (Pappendick/Ramig--more detail in post dated: Aug 19/2012)) that set me on this path, and seeing what is transpiring in our own operation, I have come to believe that we have significant influence on moisture.  The above mentioned study, indicated how rainfall was used over a 10 year period:  1% went to deep penetration, 4% ran off the surface, 12% transpiration through the crop, and 83% evaporates off the soil surface.  Our farming practices have a direct effect on three of these elements, and possibly all four.  Cropping intensity addresses the 1%.  Cropping intensity is more than annual cropping vs. fallow.  It includes a cultivars root structure and it's individual moisture requirement.  Mix and match these cultivars in a rotation to capture moisture before it escapes below the rooting zone.  The quality, quantity, and position, of our crop residue effects the 4% and 83%.  This means that our farming practices have an effect on 88% of the moisture our crops receive.  This is powerful information.  Our farming practices determine whether the moisture we receive is maximized for crop production, or frittered away.   At the end of Dr. Pappendicks presentation in 1989, his concluding statement was: ---"You can't do much to change these numbers but it is best to keep the soil cool and the surface calm as possible".   Since the 80's, things have changed.  I would like to see this study redone using ULD technology and residue in place.   We now have technology that will punch through a heavy mat of residue with very little surface disturbance.  This same technology can be used with residue that stands as tall as the tractor cab.  We now can successfully emerge a crop though conditions that allows us to keep the soil surface cool and the soil surface calm.
       It's a given that the lower the rainfall, the harder it is to armor the ground with crop residue.  Lower rainfall areas normally have progressively lighter soils, lower organic, silt and clay content and increasing sand content.  The challenge to retain moisture and grow economically sustaining crops increases as one goes from a 15" to 7" rainfall regions  HOW DOES ONE EVEN START IN THESE CONDITIONS?   ---MY SUGGESTION IS AS FOLLOWS:
         ----Start by developing a new mind set on how to raise a crop.  I have come around to believe that residue is everything.  It is the basic building block for soil in dryland farming.  If you see dirt, my conclusion is, you don't have enough residue.  Build it, and protect it.
        ----Rethink what you raise for crops. Rethink fallow.  Think beyond winter wheat!
        ----Will your soils store water?  They probably do, at least for a short period of time, or you wouldn't be cropping the ground.   An interesting exercise is to take a plank  (suggest a 2x12x12) and place it firmly on a fallowed piece of ground when you start spring work.  In the fall when you prepare to seed that fallow field, lift the plank and see if there is moisture, at the surface.  If that small area shows dampness, that tells you that your soils have not wicked out, after a significant amount of time passage.  To me, that is hope, and an opportunity.  Residue will not replace a board; however, if the moisture had not wicked out the sides of that small impervious cap, it is an indicator that residue will help.   I experienced this years ago.  A chem fallow field with a dry fall, and sparse residue had moisture down 5", and under the board, there was moisture at the soil surface, so the question became: a--how to get residue to mimmic the board, and b--how do you seed the crop without losing that moisture (which was "thin").
       ----Take a piece of property and dedicate it to no-till and start building residue.  You will likely need custom operators, so, look into that before you start.  Successful no-till is management intensive and time sensitive.  You have to get your mind around new ideas, and spray and drill operations have a narrower window for optimum response, over tillage.
       ----Build residue:  a---quit all tillage and/or residue management practices.  All interaction with residue degrades it (wheels, tracks, harrows, mowers, ect.).  Because residue is fragile and easily destroyed you will need to do a ultra-low disturbance system (ULD) to have any hope of building and maintaining residue.  b--most single disc, one pass drills qualify as ULD.  If you have consistent soil conditions (same soil with no hard or soft areas, and an even spread of residue) the CrossSlot may not be the lowest disturbance one pass drill available.  The CrossSlot is excellent in complex seeding environments.  c---select cultivars that degrade slowly.  Once a sufficient residue level is reached, protect it so you can start adding diversity in your cropping system.
       ----Add cover crops:  I/We have no practical experience with this practice --only background information.  We have made our first stab in the dark by seeding 70ac with a variety of cultivar mixes.
       More than likely regular cropping will not develop significant residue even with all ULD tricks applied in the very low rainfall regions.  This is where cover crops may play a role.  a----raise a high biomass cultivar and terminate growth at max biomass prior to viable seed development.  With this practice you are trading short term return for long term gain.  This phase may take two cover crops raised back to back to develop sufficient residue.  Cereal rye is reported to be an excellent builder of biomass.  The caution here is to be sure that your seed lot is certified as a single cultivar.  Apparently cereal rye is commonly marketed with as many as five undisclosed separate cultivars that mature differently.  I think we are all familiar with what that means.  b---once you get the soil surface protected then look at other factors of soil health, --structure and biological.  Improved structure comes with eliminating tillage.  I link high disturbance no-till to a reduced tillage practice.
     ----Rethink fallow.  There are several studies done on the efficiency of fallow.  These center around the rainfall received during the 13m fallow period and what is available for the crop following the 13m fallow period.  The efficiencies ranged from ≈ 34% (in the PNW) to <20% (in the South).  Stated another way, During the fallow period, 66% to >80% of the rainfall received is not available for crop production.  It is lost to one of the other three factors,--deep penetration, runoff, evaporation.
     The June 20th, 2015 addition of NO-TILL FARMER has an interview with an eastern Montana farmer.  Very interesting!  14" rainfall area.  He has ULD system, introduced cover crops and has increased his crop rotation, and removed fallow from his system with no loss of yield.
      Earthfort Laboratory in Salem, OR is where we are going for testing of soil biological health.  They have several tests, and programs to learn more about soil health and how to improve it.  Their website is <www.oregonfoodweb.com>

SEEDING WITH CROSS-SLOT - SPRING 2015

[8/23/15 UPDATE]:  Earlier I had a question brought up to me about seeding depth for peas.  3-4 inches seemed a bit deep to the reader.  We seeded spring standup peas this spring.  Earlier we talked to a breeder I have known for years, making inquiry about several issues, including preferred seeding depth.  His response was --no less than 2 inches and 3 would be better in the case of either fall, dormant, or spring seeding.  Most of his customer base is now direct seeding and more than 3" depth is hard to achieve.   Deep seeded peas handle the freezing-thawing cycles better than peas seeded around 1-1.5".  The ground temperature needs to be 45 degrees or they will set there unsprouted.  Once they break germ they can set for a long time in the cold before emerging.  Late seeded (dormant seeding) winter peas tend to survive winter well --just time seeding to get them to break germ before complete freeze up.
[Update 7/26/15] --  Recent conversation with Kye indicates that not all of the openers exhibit the scraper problem.  This was determined by taking off those scrapers as they plugged and running the remainder.  Are there differences in openers that plug, and those that don't plug?  We don't have a lot of runtime using this hypothesis, but it's something we will pursue.  
      An interesting note:  Dr. Keith Saxton mentioned to me that this is the very condition, (seed on the surface, and uneven plant population), they experienced 20 years ago that led to the development of the scraper.
[Update 6/14/15] -- Recent field inspections are showing a problem with our drill.  Because of our ground-residue conditions we have not been able to use the scrapers that are part of the CrosSlot design --the openers plug and drag frequently leaving voids and piles.  We noticed this spring that the fields were showing striping.  It turns out that when the seed tube is on the downhill side of the disc, it encounters a lot of pressure as the disc resists downhill movement of the drill. This pressure is enough that a percentage of the seed, not being held in place by a scrapper is being dragged to the surface by the rotating disc, resulting in a thinned stand.  If it were not for doing a lot of A-B line drilling this situation may not be noticeable.  To a certain extent, I believe this condition exists with all seed types, but crops with rough or irregular shaped seed are more noticeable.  Potential solutions are --1) figure how to use the/a scrapper that will hold the seed in place, 2) use the swinging hitch to remove this side pressure by changing the position of draft on the drill. 

    This has been a very good spring.  I don't think we have ever had this quality of stand for spring crops in my career.  Spring wheat (DNS), spring barley, Billy Beans, spring peas all have excellent stands.  The Billy Beans may be a little thin, do to seed quality.  We didn't take the low germination into account.  Adding back 15% would have made the stand thicker.  We give the CrossSlot with it's ADF system the credit with it's ability to place seed properly in a complex seed bed, --whether it is hard, soft, overladen with heavy residue, or bare ground.  It senses and automatically adjusts the down pressure on the openers to match the conditions under the drill, keeping the seed at the proper depth, --hence, giving us the stand we have today.  This is the second year that we have seeded with our own machine and our confidence is going through the roof.  What a relief, after all the years of attempts to seed spring crops, with varying success, ---always with the concern as to whether we could seed through the residue.

     We have seeded several fields with various cover crop mixes this spring.  Some mixes included large and small seed together, and mixes where seed was divided and mixed as small and large seed.  This allowed planting the seed close to their preferred depth.  We have that capability with a split seed box, and duel drives (one for the front rank and one for the rear rank of openers).  We hope to find out whether we get a better cover crop stand when each cultivar is seeded at it's proper depth.

      Below are pics showing an emerged stand of peas and billy beans in less than ideal seed bed conditions.

Standup spring peas in winter wheat stubble -- good residue cover most places.

Billy beans in very heavy mat of winter wheat residue. 

    There is a lot of variation in amounts of residue on the soil surface.  We strive for enough residue where we don't see dirt.  It's a goal we have reached on approximately half of our acres.  This will be a bigger challenge as low residue crops take up a larger part of our crop rotation.  I'm hoping that we can introduce cover crops to assist in building residue, ---HOW????  
    We are finding that success in direct seeding (including crop yields) improves as surface residue accumulates.

    This tangle of long straw smashed down over a combine chaff row is probably the most challenging condition for any drill.  A spongy mat that resists penetration.  The CrossSlot does a remarkable job in these conditions.  Fortunately, there is always moisture at the soil surface, so some shallowing of the seed due to the depth of mat still leaves seed in good moist soil.  We have learned to seed small grains at 1.5", or more.  We have successfully brought up spring wheat in areas with as much as 20,000+ #/ac of residue. [see Update for Posting: May17/14]

1st 2015 DOWNPOUR

 [Update: 5/29/15] --This past week the Palouse has had a series of thunder storms, and in scattered locations have resulted in serious damage to exposed ground.  Unstable weather is predicted to continue in the region.  When you look at the national weather events and see the extremes, one wonders when those extremes will engulf us, --either drought like California, or deluge like Texas.  World wide, weather appears to be increasing in severity.  My thought is that it will happen here, --but when and with what severity?  A Texas size storm would obliterate our land regardless of cropping practices; however, there is a lot of gradation between the Texas type storms and the little bangers we have received, which we can armor our land against.  It's as simple as eliminate loosening the soil with cultivation, keeping the soil surface covered, and keeping the soil anchored with roots (alive or dead) from the surface down.  These two things give us the best protection from unusual events whether temperature or water related.
     Saturday evening, May 16th, Thunderstorms hit eastern Whitman County with rains that did serious damage to some fields.  Fortunately the damage was limited to a narrow strip of land; however, the impact is going to be felt over a wide area.  Creeks in the effected watersheds were running thick.  They look more like mud flows than creeks.  Thousands of tons of soil along with attached fertilizer and chemistry left the farms and will end up in lakes, rivers and ocean.
    The fields I saw didn't even have the basic conservation practices applied.  They were denuded of residue, cultivated and seeded vertically, and the surface worked to a fine texture.  We are living in the age of 500+ horsepower tractors and the environment and ground is paying the price.
    An event in February, 2014, showed me that even fields with good armor and soil structure are subject to runoff; however, in our case the water loss was clear.  (see post of 2/27/14)
     Operations that abuse the ground, and there are many in the Palouse, will not be held accountable as past experience proves; however, they are big contributors to the publics attitude towards farmers and their out cry for for more regulations and restrictions that effect all of us.  If the appropriate regulators would target gross abusers and work with them to clean up their act we would all be better off.

REDUCED WEED PRESSURE

[Update: 5/24/15]  We have recently sprayed our CF and DNS.  We have so few weeds in these fields that  it is difficult to justify the cost of chemical, but it is to soon to cut these applications.  Our agronomist advised against application to the CF, but we couldn't leave the scattered single Downy Brome plants.  We put out one short load doing the draws and bordering the CRP.
          The DNS has a light infestation of Downy Brome (the bane of our small grains and fallow rotation), and plants from the failed winter canola crop. We hit the crop with a fungicide, broadleaf, and grass herbicide.
     When I started direct seeding, years ago, one worry I had, was --chaff rows left by the combine.   Combines of any make will drop grain, and in areas, a lot of grain.  Our combine is no different then anyone else's.    Rains fall, seed germinates, and fields green up, but over the years ours have consistently shown less  than most fields.  Since 2012 when we bought the stripper head and changed from high disturbance direct seeding to ultra low disturbance direct seeding I have noticed that we have further reduced the weed pressure in our fields.
    We have some theories but no validated research to support the claims.
           ----Leaving the seed bank on the surface hastens its destruction over planting it!  For a long time I have felt that the elements (heat, cold, rain, wind, sun) would decompose seed if it were not buried.  There is a lot of research stating the number of years that various seeds can remain viable in the ground.
           ---Seed laying on a blanket of residue germinates, dries, and dies!  We think this occurs, even on bare soil.  Many seeds on the surface will take up moisture and dry and die before they can get a root anchored to sustain them.  It appears that the thicker the residue layer the better.
           ---There are a lot of critters (granivores) skittering along the ground surface (birds, invertebrates, mammals) that eat seed.  The tall stubble may be protection for these granivores.
     The purpose of our direct seeding from the start was the lure of saving moisture for use by our crops as mentioned in other posts (label--Moisture).  As we have progressed toward that goal, the reduction of weed pressure is a welcome side benefit.
     Where do we go from here?  With the adoption of the stripper head, and a ULD system in the form of the CrossSlot drill, we have reached a wall (in our thinking).  We have been very successful to this point.  What further can we do to improve moisture saving and weed reduction techniques.  COVER CROPS????

DRILL DEMONSTRATION IN TALL RESIDUE

2015, June 23rd @ 9am, ---the the demonstration site is 5.5 miles west of St. John on SR23 to Eriksen Road, than ≈ one half mile south on Eriksen Road.  All interested individuals are welcome.

       Interest in the Shelbourn Stripper Header is building, but there are few opportunities to see how different drill designs will handle the heavy / tall residue.  Barley will be provided for the drill participants.
      The purpose of the demonstration is to give participants and onlookers, a quick and easy way to experience management issues associated with heavy and tall crop residue.
       The demonstration site is on 2014 winter wheat stubble. This is not the best residue year, nor is this the best site, but it's timely and convenient.  The standing residue is 26-30" tall.  The yield at the location was (+/-)70 bushels, depending on specific area.  The field has been direct seeded since 1992, and has not been touched by any tillage equipment including harrows.  Since 2012 this field has had ULD technology applied.
         We will have part of the area mowed.  This will show how a rotary mower conditions the straw.  Hopefully the conditioning will allow the hoe drills to operate successfully.   I expected that mowing will  improve conditions for the hoe drills and adversely impact the disc drills.
        Drills currently scheduled for the demonstration:
                     ---CrossSlot (single disc) (single pass)
                     ---Horsch (hoe) (single pass)
                     ---AgPro (hoe) (single pass)
                     ---Palouse Zero-Till (double disc) (single pass)
                     ---John Deere 750 (single disc) (single pass)
                     ---Great Plains w Exactrix (double disc) (two pass)
                     ---The Shelbourn Stripper Head will be on display
                     ---The Schulte 26' rotary mower will demonstrate it's effectiveness on tall stubble.
                     --- A flail mower will demonstrate it's effectiveness on tall stubble.
       There are several other brands of drills that are promoted as direct seeders.  The ones listed represent most of the drill types available, ---narrow hoe, wide hoe, double disc, offset single disc, straight single disc.