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2-Pass Seeding In Garfield County, WashingtonC&S
Farms Background Information My name is Clay Barr. We operate as C and S Farms which consists of myself, my wife Sandy, and 1 full time hired man. We farm in three different areas of Garfield County and have been in this area for 8 years. Rainfall on the properties range from 14" at around 1400 ft to 19" rainfall at up to 3,000 ft. Each location is approximately 1,000 acres of cultivated ground with a wide range of soils. Primarily Asotin Spoftard, Athena Silt Loam, and Walla Walla Silt Loam. Overall we have pretty good depths of soil with slopes ranging from 0% to 45%. Cropping Rotation
and Benefits We have primarily been recrop, SWS wheat on SWW, approx 1/2 and 1/2 each year although we have tried HRS, barley, a little canola and chem fallow. This last year we planted approximately 600 acres of Barley and put SWW on it this fall to see if we could get a yield kick. It would take a 5 to 7 bushel yield advantage to get me to switch to barley in my rotation. I would probably use a SWW, spring barley, SWS rotation. Doing this would eliminate the volunteer barley problem in the SWW. Some of the primary benefits to our system include very good erosion control without diversion dikes or many water ways, limited machinery, less manpower and quantifiable soil profile improvement. Without diversion dikes to interfere with harvest we are able use a small harvest crew by spotting our trucks. There is also very little overrun in our operation due to the lack of field obstacles. Cropping Equipment
We have been primarily recrop wheat on wheat for 8 years. Originally we used a Calkins 39 foot chisel on 12 inch centers with 16 inch sweeps and fertilizer attachments hooked in tandem with a 1,500-gallon backpacker. We seeded with John Deer 455 drills. 3 years ago we switched to knife points on our chisel and acquired a Kraus 5300 no-till drill. We wanted less soil disturbance and needed better soil penetration and seed placement in rough conditions than I could get with the 455's. With this equipment, if I get a hard spring rain after I fertilize I can still seed right into this condition. This last year we started using a 42 foot cultivator to fertilize with in the spring in our higher elevation ground. This was an attempt to warm up the soil, a persistent problem in minimum tillage operations in the spring. Cropping Operations In the fall we fertilize with our chisel equipped with knife points after harvest. If we get an early rain we spray with RU and depending on rains we either dust in our wheat or seed into moisture using starter, either Nitrogen or Phosphate depending on soil needs. If we can't spray before seeding we'll monitor the fields and use Maverick post emergence or RU pre-emergence. We typically cover 150 to 200 acres per day both fertilizing and seeding, requiring about 1 1/2 men [or women]. In the spring we spray our standing stubble with RU, usually at 16 to 20 oz. We fertilize with either a chisel or cultivator and seed using starter. We have also used Fargo behind our cultivator operation. We apply this by harrow and then cross harrow the ground before seeding. If your wild oats are light enough it is best to post emerge them if possible. We don't believe we have suffered much yield loss by going wheat on wheat but we are very careful about our green bridge timing, waiting at least 2 weeks between spraying and seeding. This is an easy conversion from traditional tillage to two-pass. You can match the size of drill and fertilizer equipment to your present tractor capability. Our wheel tractor, a John Deere 9300 at approximately 375 HP, handles the 39 ft chisel and 35 ft drill quite easily. The Kraus drill is capable of seeding traditional summer fallow, so it is a good transition drill. This past fall we used the one-pass Great Plains 30 ft no-till drill to seed our steepest ground. Both of these drills do a very good job of sticking hillsides. We have had very good success establishing stands in tough conditions. We work very hard on residue management, we cut our straw fairly short, use a fine cut chopper and straw spreader with a 9610 John Deere Hillside machine with a 32% leveler. System Trouble
Spots The single most troublesome problem has by far been controlling wild oats. If I had the opportunity to start fresh with this system we would have been more aggressive with our wild oat control from the start. In a full recrop situation you have to be very pro-active controlling oats even in the lower rainfall areas. I'm considering some chem fallow in my worst areas, especially the dryer ground for economic reasons. Future Management
Options Needed Probably the single factor that would make my system more efficient and financially more viable would be a RU resistant wheat. This would greatly enhance our wild oat and cheat grass control and help us get our grain up earlier in the fall and spring. I do have several reservations about this science for if we get much in the way of RU resistant oats or other problem weeds we would all be back to tillage. It is very helpful to have nearby neighbors trying these types of systems or even conventional systems that you can compare yields and costs with [although rare it helps a lot if everyone is honest about their yields]. |
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us: Hans Kok, (208)885-5971
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