The soil health goals Gary Greenlee has for his farms are the same, despite the drastic 1,800-mile distance between them. The long-time no-tiller and strip-tiller farms about 200 acres of silt loam in Illinois, as well as about 1,000 acres of good soil in Idaho.

For both operations, he serves as operator, overseeing data, decision-making and the agribusiness professionals he works with. Greenlee grew up on a dairy and hog farm near his ground in Illinois. The farm where he currently lives was purchased by his grandfather in the 1950s, and he and his wife, Jane, purchased it in 1991. He decided to try no-till around 1986 when he was in his 30s.

“No-till really came about for a few reasons,” he says. “Jane worked full time as a nurse manager at a local hospital. We had three active sons, and I had 2 jobs. I worked for my father-in-law, which was 55-60 hours per week, and I farmed 375 acres.”

In addition to needing to save time, Greenlee also was looking for a solution to the erosion he noticed as the farm transitioned from moldboard plowing to chisel plowing.

“No-till made sense for saving time and soil,” Greenlee says. “I decided that when I turned over the ground eventually to someone else, it would be in better shape than when I started. That and the time savings. How do you make all this easier when you’re 30?”

About a decade later, Greenlee was on a hunting trip in Idaho and saw some land for sale. In 1995, in his mid-40s, Greenlee purchased the mountainous property.

“I stayed in touch with the realtor, and a farm was for sale in 2000,” he says. “The land’s cheaper, so we bought that one. And a few years later, another one, and a few years later a third one.”

No-Till & Strip-Till

Greenlee uses the 1,000 acres of Camas prairie in Idaho to grow mostly perennial Kentucky bluegrass, but he also no-tills some spring and winter wheat, canola, mustard, green peas for soup, lentils and barley.

Currently, the bluegrass grows on about 80% of his acres and lasts as long as 12 years. Growing bluegrass for seed requires annual controlled burning to induce high yields. Prior to seeding, vertical tillage may be needed because the bluegrass seed is very small. After years in the soybean-corn rotation, the idea of growing something slightly different appealed to Greenlee.

“I like the idea of growing something different with a different contract vs. corn and soybeans,” he says.

Wheat is the prime crop in Idaho. He’s seen yields as high as 125 bushels per acre. He brought no-till with him from Illinois to Idaho.

“When I went out there, I decided I wasn’t going to till due to the slopes on some of the fields,” he says. “So I work with guys who do less or no-tillage.”

But back at the home farm in Illinois, Greenlee noticed a few less-than-ideal consequences of the transition to no-till.

“It seemed like when you no-tilled, you were a few days behind,” Greenlee says. “I don’t know if it’s the temperature of the soil, and I don’t know if that still holds true or not.”

Strip-till was a happy accident based on the farming practices in his Illinois community. Greenlee never owned a combine, so he always worked with nearby growers, including Dan Bubert. Bubert became Greenlee’s primary harvesting partner initially because his combine was also set to 38-inch rows, the same spacing Greenlee used. About 15 years ago, they made the transition to 30-inch rows and strip-till together, too.

Nowadays, Greenlee strip-tills corn into soybean stubble and then no-tills soybeans into the corn stalks. Bubert does most of the planting with a 16-row John Deere 1790 planter with split rows. The two-gang setup allows him to raise the rear row when seeding corn to plant in 30-inch rows. For soybeans, they drop the split row to no-till in 15-inch rows.

“When we looked at the beans, it seemed like what was popular at the time was drilling, and you had narrower spacing,” Greenlee says. “There were concerns about white mold that might impact the quality of the crop. We thought 15-inch rows — because you can buy the planters that way — might make more sense for beans. We decided to narrow them up, but not too narrow.”

Greenlee says he’s gotten up to 230-bushel corn, an improvement from the 130-140 bushels he used to get. Along with good growing conditions, he credits equipment quality, Dekalb’s seed genetics and no-till with the yield increase.

“No-till has helped because we’re not losing soil or releasing carbon,” he says.

No-tilled soybeans, however, have not been as productive.

“It’s been harder to get that kind of yield boost with the beans,” he says. “It seems like years ago, I was getting 60 bushels at times with 38-inch rows. You’d think with changing how we’re doing things, it wouldn’t be as difficult to get 70 bushels.”

In 2021 and 2022, he applied about 150 pounds per acre of nitrogen (N) to his corn in a split-N configuration using variable rate recommendations offered by the Illinois Fertilizer & Chemical Assn. Phosphorus and potassium are broadcast using variable rate technology

“For the last couple of years, we averaged about 0.75 pound of N per bushel,” he says. “0.8 was my goal. We’re trying to use less N.”

Problem Solving

Greenlee has tried different approaches to push his soybean yields higher. They’ve added fungicide applications and tried some biological treatments, including Graph-Ex for soybeans, a rhizobial bacterial inoculant produced by Agrauxine.

He believes cover crops can be beneficial for yield improvement, too. He tried a variety of seeding methods over the years because making the covers work in his operation has been a challenge. In 2014-15, he had a blend of clover and oats seeded aerially, but only the oats grew.

“I couldn’t find any clover,” he says. “I think the people who make it work are interseeding, or they’ve changed their rotation and gone to wheat.”

For example, the grower who sold him cover crop seed has added wheat to his rotation and doesn’t plant cover crops until after the wheat year of the rotation. The earlier harvest allows for planting cover crops.

“He can seed it in August, and he gets a lot of growth and a lot of value,” Greenlee says.

Greenlee tried drilling Austrian black peas with a rented no-till drill. They flourished initially but then died off. He suspects residual soybean herbicides might have killed them.

In October of 2020, Greenlee seeded vetch and clover into bean stubble. The vetch grew during the spring to a height of about 8 inches. Corn was planted after strip-tilling, and. 3-4 days after planting, the application of pre-emerge chemicals, along with UAN 32, terminated the vetch.

“During the fall of 2021, we had rye flown on to corn stalks, but we only got 3-4 decent acres out of it.”

Not willing to give up on cover crops, Greenlee seeded about 100 acres of a three-blend cover crop mix of 15 pounds of triticale, 5 pounds of hairy vetch and 3 pounds of winter camelina Oct. 23-24, 2022, using an older John Deere Model B conventional drill. While not a no-till drill, Greenlee says it provided decent seed-to-soil contact. The cover crop went directly into the soybean stubble. He’s receiving funding from the USDA’s National Resources Conservation Service and says results have been promising so far.

“The camelina’s coming along, so we think we will get some good growth by spring,” he says. “We are currently seeing some triticale and vetch growing.”

The goal is to help build organic matter in the soil faster.

“My hope was no-till would help with this process,” he says. “We struggled a little getting the organic matter to increase as much as we would like with no-till. It’s gone up 0.5-1 point in the last 20 years.”

He’s also open to planting green if he can get a stand thick of covers. In the fall of 2023, he plans to drill cereal rye into corn stalks.

“During the spring of 2024, we’re going to seed soybeans into it,” Greenlee says.“We hope to plant into a stand of thick green covers.”