Strip Tillage In Action

Tuesday afternoon I was at Brad Spinler's farm by Morristown. Special thanks to Brad for hosting the annual Corn Harvest Broadcast on KRFO. It was a great time thanks also to Troy at Cash Wise Foods in Owatonna for bringing a great lunch, roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy! It was more relaxing because the corn harvest was pretty well finished with just some tillage left. Brad was doing a new type of tillage called strip till.

The machine in the picture below is a Soil Warrior manufactured by Environmental Tillage Systems based in Faribault. The Soil Warrior tills a 10-inch strip and leaves the other 20 inches untilled. In addition to tilling, the Soil Warrior injects phosphorus and potassium in the 10-inch strip that is tilled. Next spring Brad will plant the seed in the 10 inches that were tilled. The tilled strip is an ideal environment to plant the seed in because it warms up and dries out better. The other 20 inches has the crop residue left on the soil surface to protect against water and wind erosion.

Strip tilling is really gaining in popularity as a common practice. You get the benefits of tillage for early season crop development and the benefits of no tillage for protecting the soil. What is really neat is the Soil Warrior was developed by Mark Bauer, a farmer by Faribault. The company Environmental Tillage Systems was formed and now they manufacture and market Soil Warriors around the United States and to other countries!