Retrofit to Direct Seed Profitably

By Garry Mayerle, PAg

Conservation Agrologist

Direct seeding can be made to work profitably on any size farm. The Craigs who farmed at Carrot River have demonstrated that big acreages, and large new equipment are not necessary to obtain benefits from low disturbance seeding.

Osborne and Dorothy Craig just retired from farming this past spring. They farmed in the NE corner of the province straight east of Carrot River about as far as you can go before you run into the Wildcat Hills. They cropped about 550 acres of grey wooded soils (Tisdale silty clay loams).

Osborne's interest in reducing tillage was first sparked in 1977. He rented a John Deere 2 rank hoe drill to seed some winter wheat into standing canola stubble. Of course the drill didn't have enough clearance and acted like a rake. However, Osborne was very happy with the yield and felt there were big benefits from trapping snow and conserving moisture.

Osborne was very active on the District #31 ADD Board. One of their projects was investigating alternative seeding methods. They worked with Jim Halford and Professor Grant Milne from the U of S on a demonstration with an early Conserva Pak drill. Osborne had a trial on his farm. One year they seeded canola into wheat stubble and compared it to a conventionally tilled and seeded field right beside it. There was a yield advantage of 10 bu/ac or better that year and the Craigs were convinced. Osborne kept the trial going for 10 years. ( See Chart 1 for some of the results)

CHART 1 - ADD BOARD DISTRICT #31SOIL CONSERVATION RESULTS - CRAIG SITE

From then on, Osborne was determined to make direct seeding work on his farm. For 3 years he hired a neighbour with a Conserva Pak drill to do his seeding. This cost $16/ac and Osborne began looking for his own equipment for direct seeding. He started off with an IH 7200 hoe drill and a two pass system where he knifed in NH₃ with an old MacGregor tine applicator. He made this application in the spring but the row spacing was quite wide on these applicators and there was often crop streaking. He tried spreading dry fertilizer on the surface but unless there were timely rains, he was not happy with the results.

There were 2 hoe drills in the region that had been retrofitted with mid row band NH₃ applicators and Osborne decided to make this work on his drill too. His drill was one 14 ft. section so filling the drill with a NH₃ tank hooked behind the drill was not too difficult. He used K-Hart coulters to apply the NH₃. These are smooth bladed coulters which swivel and can trip. The NH₃ plastic tubes run to the bottom of a 5/8 inch X 18inch coil type tine which follows immediately behind the coulter in the slot it cuts. Osborne had a welding shop extend the frame on his drill. The front wheel was moved ahead 4 feet with new frame added to support it. The coulters were mounted on a hydraulically actuated subframe which raised and lowered the coulters. Osborne says that the design worked great except for a couple of coulters that hooked at the top position. The coulters were about $400 each with the total cost for materials running about $5000.

The hoes are 7inches apart and the coulters run between every other hoe at 14inches apart. Osborne says that even where the slot behind the coulter does not close the hoes next to it throw enough dirt to close it. The coulters ran 2 to 3 inches deeper than the seed openers. He did keep his seeding speed down to 4 mph to keep front seed rows from being buried deeper. Osborne started out with an eagle beak type of seed opener but these soon wore unevenly resulting in uneven seeding depths so he replaced them with Atom Jet carbide openers. He was very happy with them. One down fall with the drill is that it tends to pull out rocks.

To manage his residue better, Osborne lengthened the straw chopper fins on his CCIL 9600 combine. He did not use a chaff spreader and did not seem to have any problem with chaff rows probably because he was only cutting 15 feet wide. He did seed on an angle which helps alleviate residue row problems. The last 2 years before he retired were very dry years in his area and residue was not breaking down as well so he harrowed. He did note though, that harrowing does promote weed growth.

Lower disturbance seeding reduced weed populations for Osborne. Interestingly, he notes that with direct seeding, he felt confident seeding wheat into barley stubble (or vice versa) without seeing volunteer barley rows in the field. A custom operator did his Round-up burn off so he often did some pre seed and some post seed burn off. There were times when burn off was not needed especially if he knew he would be using a strong dose in crop.

One of the interesting points about Osborne's rotation is that he is very positive about seeding into herbicide terminated alfalfa. He says taking a year to summerfallow alfalfa is a waste. He would spray ½ L of Roundup on the alfalfa to be terminated in the fall, another ½ L in the spring before seeding and then he felt the ground was mellow for seeding Roundup Ready canola. Another ½ L in crop pretty well took care of the alfalfa.

Retrofitting his hoe drill to precision place NH₃ meant that Osborne was able to make 1 pass low disturbance seeding work and produce good yields on his farm.