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On this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by DigiFarm, we go 1-on-1 with Westville, Ind., strip-tiller Jeff Herrold for a conversation about nutrient management, cover crops, strip-till equipment and more!
In recent years, Herrold has become a firm believer in spacing out his fertilizer applications to maximize uptake, while also marginally dialing back rates. Herrold shares some recent adjustments he’s made to his nutrient management strategies and how he’s applying N up to 4 different times and ways throughout the growing season.
Herrold also explains why he switched from a knife to a coulter setup, the importance of micronutrients, the role cover crops play in his operation and why he’s keeping an eye on slugs this spring.
Use the promo code DIGIFARM to receive 15% off your 2024 National Strip-Tillage Conference registration. Head to StripTillConference.com to download the program and register.
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The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by DigiFarm.
DigiFarm VBN is an RTK corrections provider utilizing our privately owned network across much of the US. We work with all brands of GPS receivers and have numerous ways in how we can deliver our RTK corrections. DigiFarm has our in house designed modem elevate and our popular Bluetooth device called the Beacon used in conjunction with our DigiFarm VBN app. We also can use other OEM installed modem devices along with displays that have NTRIP capabilities.
DigiFarm VBN provides industry leading technologies, support, and resources to the dealer as well as end user. DigiFarm VBN uses its own base stations to create a virtual base giving the end user greater accuracy and reliability at industry leading pricing.
DigiFarm VBN is used in the AG industry by growers, producers, ag retailers, agronomist, and provides dealership opportunities to precision ag dealers. DigiFarm continues to grow not only by our ever-expanding network but also by growth in autonomy , robotic and drone technologies as they become more common place in our industry.
Full Transcript
Noah Newman:
And the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast returns from a short hiatus. Great to have you with us. I'm Technology Editor, Noah Newman. Big thanks to our sponsor, DigiFarm. Use the promo code DIGIFARM at striptillconference.com to receive 15% off your national strip-tillage conference registration. The conference takes place August 8th and 9th in Madison, Wisconsin this year. Would love to see you there.
Today we're catching up with Westville, Indiana strip-tiller, Jeff Herrold, for a conversation about nutrient management, cover crops, strip-till equipment, and more. Let's jump right in to the conversation.
Just going back to, I think, 2012 or 2013, when you started strip-tilling, do you remember why you made the switch to strip-till and what some of the motivations were?
Jeff Herrold:
So in that timeframe, we were doing a lot of corn on corn, and so I was just getting tired of all the tillage, and burning all this fuel, and hours, and points. And so we looked to strip-till to try and alleviate a lot of tillage and passes on corn on corn. So that was one main reason.
And then we also liked the nutrient placement, putting nutrients below the seed, and being more efficient with our fertilizer.
Noah Newman:
Yeah, that seems like usually a big motivator for strip-till, the nutrient placement. So do you make your strips in the spring, the fall, or both?
Jeff Herrold:
We are all in the spring.
Noah Newman:
And then, what's the reasoning for that? Is it just weather, timing, soil type? Why spring over fall?
Jeff Herrold:
I don't want to make two passes, and the spring, we're usually going into cover. I want to move that cover out of the way. I like to put nitrogen down with it. So with our sandy soil, I'm scared to put fertilizer, even potash down in the fall, because of how much we would lose. And so putting fertilizer down in front of the seed, nitrogen, and potash, the main reasons.
Noah Newman:
Okay, so you're applying fertilizer with the strip-till rig.
Jeff Herrold:
Yes.
Noah Newman:
And then what kind? You said potash and nitrogen, and then what are the approximate rates? Or does it vary?
Jeff Herrold:
It varies year by year. I've tried lowering it back quite a bit, and what was it, 2020, '21, when fertilizer just went insane? We backed off quite a bit, and I thought our yields went backwards, too. I was short on some [inaudible 00:02:34] and potassium. So we're up in our rates back up in. Urea, we put 50 pounds on. Potash, 50 pounds. [inaudible 00:02:45] 10, 60 pounds. Pelt lime, 20 pounds.
Noah Newman:
And so all that you're putting on with the strip-till rig. Do you have one tank, or how does that work?
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah, we got one tank, and it's a salper tank. So we use a salper tank on the strip-till rig, and then we take it off. In the fall, we'll apply a cover crop on with a high boy.
Noah Newman:
What kind of cover crop do you put on?
Jeff Herrold:
Annual rye, oats, radish, some crimson clover, and then we'll do some custom guys. We have some organic stuff, and we'll put some red clover in it.
Noah Newman:
You're strip-tilling right through those? Or do you terminate and then strip-till through them?
Jeff Herrold:
Usually that's going into soybeans.
Noah Newman:
Okay.
Jeff Herrold:
The nitrogen is organic, like the clover and the crimson. So that's terminated by basically a plow bass or a flail mower. Yeah, we tried flail mowing it and then strip-tilling it, and we weren't overly happy with what we were doing. So last year we stopped stripping into the clover, and just end up chisel plowing it to make sure the whole thing was terminated, because we were getting a lot of clover coming back.
So yeah, one thing in the past, we were putting wolf tracks powder with our dry. And I don't know if you're familiar with, it was like a micro package, with boron and stuff, but it was like a powder they'd blend with the dry, to get some micros in with it. We were having issue with, if it was high humidity, that stuff would just start taking and plugging up our lines. Past two years, we've gone away from it. I think last year, it was just too humid. It was warmer and more humid than it typically is, because we're like, "What in the world's going on? Is the fans not working? Or why does it keep plugging lines up?"
And then you'd take the lines apart and it'd just be caked all on the side walls.
Noah Newman:
Oh, wow.
Jeff Herrold:
So some of the later fields that, the field corn and stuff will blow nutrients on, if we feel like it's necessary.
Noah Newman:
And then do you put starter fertilizer with the planter or how does your process with the planter work?
Jeff Herrold:
Yes. We got Two-by-Two and In-Furrow, so we're putting 10-34-O, 9 gallon, and 32% nitrogen. That's eight gallon. And some ammonia thio sulfate, some ATS, at about a gallon and a half.
Noah Newman:
And then what kind of planter do you have?
Jeff Herrold:
John Deere 1770.
Noah Newman:
I read an article, I think we had talked about the importance of spacing out nitrogen applications throughout the season. So can you talk a little bit about that, and how you're doing that, and the importance of that?
Jeff Herrold:
So yeah, we're putting it in the strip-tiller, putting it in planting, and side dress. And then we do some Y-drop later in season, and through pivots. So yeah, my goal is to use the least amount of nitrogen I can use.
Our struggle, for me, is organic matter and building organic matter. And from what I understand, higher nitrogen in the soil, it's going to burn your carbon. So I'm trying to be more efficient, just instead of throwing 200 pounds out early, for one, our CECs are six to eight, so we don't have a lot of capacity, holding capacity. And yeah, just trying to be as efficient as we can with our nitrogen.
Noah Newman:
When do you side dress?
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah, like the V4 to V6, so depending on how much we put on earlier, and then what our yield goal is at that time, what we think is applicable. We're not taking any soil test or anything like, in season. But yeah, just if we think we can still meet our yield goal, and that's how we determine.
Noah Newman:
And so you do that by just eyeballing it? Looking at the crop? Or?
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah, is the crop behind? Last year I made the mistake of, it was a really tough spring, and things didn't look very good, didn't come out of the ground good. And then it turned really dry. So June came along and we're like, "Man, this crop looks like it's going to suck." So I backed some rates off of the end, and it turned into be a really good corn year. And so I held stuff back. We could have had higher yields if I would've kept our end rates where they should have been, where my goal was.
But I pulled back because I thought the conditions early on cut the top end off, and we couldn't... We'd be wasting money, which was not the case.
Noah Newman:
What do you use to side dress? Do you have a side dresser?
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah, blue jet, side dress, and we've went from colders to a Y-drop system.
Noah Newman:
Y-drops with the blue jet side dresser? How does the pivot system work then? Do you come back later in the season?
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah, so later, around tassling, we'll come in and run like five gallon through the pivot, five to 10 gallon through a liquid injector.
Noah Newman:
The five to 10 gallons of what product?
Jeff Herrold:
32.
Noah Newman:
32, okay. And let's burn a quick time out. Here's a message from our sponsor, DigiFarm. DigiFarm VBN is an RTK corrections provider utilizing our privately owned network across much of the US. We work with all brands of GPS receivers, and have numerous ways in how we can deliver our RTK corrections.
DigiFarm has our in-house design modem Elevate, and our popular Bluetooth device called the Beacon, used in conjunction with our DigiFarm VBN app. We also can use other OEM installed modem devices, along with displays, that have in-trip capabilities. DigiFarm VBN provides industry-leading technologies, support, and resources to the dealer, as well as the farmer. DigiFarm VBN uses its own base stations to create a virtual base, giving the end user greater accuracy and reliability at industry-leading prices.
And again, get 15% off your national strip-tillage conference registration with the promo code DIGIFARM. That's promo code DIGIFARM for 15% off. Head to striptillconference.com to register for the conference, which takes place August 8th and 9th in Madison, Wisconsin. Now back to the conversation. What are your average yields, would you say? And how much has this method of spacing out nitrogen applications, how has this played a key role in reaching those yields?
Jeff Herrold:
I know it's made us more efficient, and efficient with it, and saved us money on just the price of N. Like last year, our farm averaged 236. It should have been higher than that, but our N, I don't know what our ratio is, but we were probably at 190 units of N on average for-
Noah Newman:
Throughout for the entire year?
Jeff Herrold:
Right. To get 236 bushel.
Noah Newman:
So your strip-till rig, what brand, what kind of strip-till rig is it?
Jeff Herrold:
Dawn. A Dawn Pluribus.
Noah Newman:
Nice Coulter shanks, or what's row units there?
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah, yeah, Coulter system. Yep.
Noah Newman:
Have you tried anything else or have you always been Coulter?
Jeff Herrold:
We started with a Krause Gladiator with a knife. And we felt like, I liked it, but I didn't like in the spring. I think it would've been a really good machine for the fall. But for the spring, I felt like we were doing too much tillage, and we didn't need to be that aggressive. And so I liked the concept of the Coulter system. And we were struggling with that knife, getting a good seat bed in cover. So we felt like the Dawn would do better into cover.
Noah Newman:
How deep are you making strips? And how deep are you placing the fertilizer?
Jeff Herrold:
Four to five inches deep, and then the dry is blown in with it. So it's basically throughout the whole profile, zero to the bottom of the trench. Because that Krause knife, you're placing it, you can change your spacing, how deep you put it, or at the top of the shank or the bottom of the shank. Where with the Coulter system, it's just really, you're just blowing it with that Coulter, and it's just mulching it together.
Noah Newman:
Back to the nitrogen, spacing the nitrogen out, do you remember, was there an aha moment you had, where you decided that that was the way you needed to go? Or you know what I mean? How'd you determine that?
Jeff Herrold:
I think for us, for our area, we've always been more spacing than other areas. No one around here will do falling hydrus, like some Illinois, Iowa, you see a lot of that. So it really wasn't a big switch to us. We were always putting it on planting, and we were always putting it on side dressing. And in seed corn, what we noticed was, when we'd do late N and seed corn, it helped. And so I think just doing that early on, 25 years ago, we could see extra benefit from N.
So we bought, I should say we made a nitrogen bar, in 2002 or something, to apply late N on. So yeah, I think that was kind the aha moment for us, was putting it on late N seed corn.
Noah Newman:
Oh, okay. Oh, you built your own nitrogen bar.
Jeff Herrold:
Yeah.
Noah Newman:
You still use that today?
Jeff Herrold:
No, no. It was a beast. But yeah, it served a purpose at that time, because there really wasn't bars to be had back then. And it was kind of a new concept.
Noah Newman:
What's the importance of micronutrients? In addition to, you always hear about the MP and K, of course, but micronutrients, and also sulfur, it seems like is pretty key too. Just tell me a little bit about that, the importance of those?
Jeff Herrold:
So we always want to have sulfur with our, we have a ratio, our sulfur to N ratio that we try and keep in place. And so we're putting on, we'll put AMS in front of the soybeans, to try and get more sulfur. But in corn, yeah, we're putting ATS with the planter and it's side dress. So anytime we're putting nitrogen on, just trying to keep the N-S ratio where I think it's good. And because, sulfur helps uptake nitrogen.
And then the other, the zinc, just trying to put zinc on for a better test weight. And then we're putting boron in, and calcium. There's a micro blend of liquid that we put in the starter, that I'm sure has many other things, manganese, and copper, but it's just a generic corn mix liquid.
Noah Newman:
Do you strip-till all your corn acres?
Jeff Herrold:
Yes, all the corn acres except the organic acres.
Noah Newman:
And then, do you no till soybeans?
Jeff Herrold:
Yes.
Noah Newman:
Okay.
Jeff Herrold:
1400 acres of corn. And about, probably the same, 1400 of soybeans.
Noah Newman:
Can you kind of just fill us in on how things are going, with planting season here early, and anything you're keeping an eye on this year?
Jeff Herrold:
So we've got about 900 acres of beans planted, so we're looking really good. And then we've got about 400 acres of corn, because we always start beans first. So yeah, corn's on schedule. With seed corn, they don't want to start before May 1st anyway. So a little ahead of schedule. And yeah, things went in the ground really good. Conditions were good.
So everything so far looks really nice. The only problem we're seeing this spring is slugs, which we haven't experienced that in the past. And I don't know how bad they are yet, but just seeing some makes me a little nervous.
Noah Newman:
I wonder what could cause that? Do you have any theories or anything?
Jeff Herrold:
Well, you hear the no-till guys talk about it, and they would say that's why they went to vertical tillage, just to try and stir things up. And so I don't know. I don't think it's bad. I think they're just a little out there. But that just makes me nervous for the future, like does that mean they're coming? Or is that within a reasonable threshold? But when they have damp places to hide, and underneath trash, in the cover and stuff, I don't know. We really haven't had any experience with slugs, so it's kind of new territory for us.
Noah Newman:
Well, it sounds like everything's going well. Yeah, we did a poll where we asked people, do they plant soybeans first or corn first? So you go soybeans first. Is there a specific reason why?
Jeff Herrold:
We're just trying to get them, yeah, growing early, fast. I think corn is more sensitive to colder temperature, and as far as holding it back, where soybeans, if you can get them out in the ground, the more they're growing, the more nodes they're going to put on. So I want them growing as soon as possible.
Noah Newman:
All right, that'll wrap things up for this week's episode of the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast. Thanks to our guest, Jeff Herrold. Thanks to our sponsor, DigiFarm. And remember, use that promo code DIGIFARM for 15% off your national strip-tillage conference registration at striptillconference.com.
Thanks so much for tuning in. Until next time, for all things strip-till, head to striptillfarmer.com. Have a great day.
