A little Tillage Ruins No-Till

      [update 10/6/16]  I have no comment related to the cover crop aspect; however, the tillage part supports my experience, and my contention that using "no-till" as a rotational practice, in CT is not sustainable.  It takes time for ground to re-develop soil structure, and channels from earthworm activity, and decayed root channels.  Any cultivation will destroy the surface connection for moisture to rapidly enter the soil profile.  Many will argue that moisture goes two ways as a reason to till and make the dust mulch in the fallow year.  Yes! --CF with little cover, can dry down the seed zone moisture.  I haven't found that it dried deeper than CT; however, it's harder to reach.  In our operation moisture has improved through increased surface residue, --it's a priority for us.  Moving to ULD (ultra low disturbance) is helping.  Using the stripper header where possible is helping.  The main factor in making winter wheat a high yielding success for us is to seed for early emergance in the fall.  Don't wait and let seed zone moisture escape.  That may mean seeding in August.  We have not gone that extreme yet, but some have.  No-till takes different management thinking to be successful. 
     FARM JOURNAL, Oct.2016:  Article by Darrell Smith reports on experiment done by Farm Journal's field agronomist, Ken Ferry.  The experiment compares two fields, --one with 4 years of no-till and the last two years featured cereal rye as a cover crop.  The other field had three years of no-till with the fourth year either having one or two tillage operations.  The implements used were, a soil finisher, moldboard plow, chisel plow.  There were several conclusions made by Ferry.  Among them, --cover crop (rye) did little to improve infiltration, --top few inches were dryer than the no-till prior to termination, but wetter after termination. --tillage hurt soil structure resulting in less infiltration, --the moldboard plow sole restricted water percolation into lower soil profile, --in their soils, more water ran off the surface with that one tillage year in four, compared to four no-till years.  Consider what those conclusions mean for us in the Palouse Hills when translated from the flatlands of Missouri.