Although the northeast corner of the province got virtually all of their seed in the ground last spring, many producers would like to avoid the down time last year's wet spring meted out to them. Wayne and Rollice Gronvold kept pressing on through much of the wet spell that had most of their neighbors anxiously looking for some warm sunshine. Wayne says germination and yield on fields seeded during this wet spell was the same as crops seeded before or after this wet period, even on the Tisdale clay they farm.
Wayne attributes most of their success in these wet conditions to the build up of a good mat of residue. As long as the tractor pulling their Concord air drill will ride up on top of this mat they can keep going. They have been direct seeding for nine years now but Wayne is confident that this residue mat was there after three years of one-pass seeding. Wayne and his Dad, Rollice, do not harrow. They handle residue with a Redekop chopper on a New Holland TR, which also spreads chaff. They pull their 40 foot Concord drill with a 9150 Case IH set up with 20.8 x 38 tires (This is a 280 hp. tractor). The drill has simple 6 inch cut off sweeps on 12 inch spacing. The shanks are set up on three rows. Up until now, Gronvolds have been placing all their fertilizer as a dry blend with the seed underneath these cut off sweeps. Their on row packer tires are implement tires run at 12 lb/in2.
They farm north and east of Tisdale on degraded black to gray wooded soils classified as Arborfield heavy clay to Waitville clay loam. On one particular quarter Wayne says there was a large low organic matter area the locals call "white clay." The characteristic of this soil is that there is a very short window in which moisture conditions are ideal to till or disturb this land. If you disturb this land when it is too wet it will ball and hardened up like concrete. If you wait till it is too dry it starts cracking open, and comes up in bigger and bigger lumps. Before they started direct seeding, this area always yielded poorer than the rest of the quarter. This past year they seeded this quarter during this wet spell to AC Metcalfe barley. It came up a little thin in these problem soil areas but the yield averaged 90 bu/ac and this white clay area yielded every bit as good as the rest of the field. Wayne is very happy with the way direct seeding is getting fiber and residue back into these problem soils.
Too wet to seed for the Gronvolds is when they can't pull the drill. Wayne says last year the front duals on the 4 wheel drive continued to run quite clean. The back duals and the front castors on the air drill were picking up some mud but the tire faces was running clean. There was no problem keeping the mud residue and dirt flowing through the drill. The unique setup of the staggered Concord packers on walking beam axles enabled them to continue shedding enough mud to keep seeding. If they would have been set up in gang arrangement Wayne says they would have been a solid roller of mud. In fact the packers had so much mud build up that they shimmed down the back cylinders ¼ to ½ inch to keep the drill seeding at an equal depth front to rear. They do keep their speed down to 4.5 mph and this gives them good dirt flow over top the seed row.
Wayne says they did see some crusting when things finally dried out but they have so much residue in their soil now that there are enough cracks for the crop to emerge. Crusting has been traditionally a big concern when seeding in wet soils in this area.
Wayne has heard often that their system will be in big trouble in a wet spring. He says that after a rain they are usually the first ones back in the field and they are seeding while the neighbors are just tilling! If they can drive the half ton across the field then seeding will go. It may not look pretty but then their system never does and we don't get paid for pretty. One difficulty is locating the soupy spots in the stubble. Rollice's memory of the location of sloughs during conventional till days comes in very handy!