 I am Naim Culver, I'm Extension Soil Halt Specialist out of Langdon with me is Dr. Abhivik. She is our State Soil Halt Specialist and Scott Swinson who is helping us with Zoom is the IP Specialist, they both work out of Fargo. So welcome to the second webinar of our NDSU Zoom Soil Halt Webinar Series. Last Tuesday we had our first one and if you are not able to join that, that webinar is available through YouTube. Today we are having a second one and then for the next two weeks we'll have four more and starting at 11 Tuesdays and Thursdays. Just as a reminder that each webinar will have one pre-recorded presentation and we'll follow that up with some questions, answers or any discussions you guys wanted to have. So today again we are going to be focusing on the challenges which were created by the vet weather last fall as well as we were facing some of these issues this is spring. So last Tuesday Dr. Day talked about these challenges by comparing different tellage practices. Today we'll have Abby talk about say for example what should we do with vet fields by using cover crops. So that presentation will go on for about 27 minutes and then we'll again leave it open for questions and answers or discussions. If you needed to ask questions while we were playing the video please type the questions in your chat box. So like Abby I won't be able to do that because I would be sharing a screen but Abby can actually answer the question while her presentation is playing for you guys. So I'm just going to start sharing my screen first. So I'm glad to be here today to talk about soil health practices and how they might help with what fields. I feel like everybody is kind of looking at their fields this year and they may be a precipitation event away from being flooded or thinking about maybe the future if we consistently are wet as to what management practices they could use. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about how soil health practices can help us manage moisture in the fields so including reducing tillage and also using cover crops. So this picture on the bottom of this actually opening slide is a field that I was in this fall on a high clay soil in the southern Red River Valley. And this is a field where they've been using no till for about five years or six years and incorporating cover crops in every part of the rotation. And you can see the standing water out here in this field. It's obviously post-swinging harvest and then the tracks of where we drove across this field and actually through the standing water and I can tell you I was really I mean I love soil health but I was kind of nervous driving across this field because I thought oh what if we get stuck or we know it and then I just as we went across the field it was it was not a problem we had great traffic ability and the field the structure in the field was set up really well and so so I wanted to share some of these experiences and things that I've seen over the past couple years and hopes that maybe they'll help you pick some of the practices you may want to try on your farms if you have wet conditions. So here's that field again with cover crops no till and actually no it's not any tile installed under this field and then across the road we've got a field that does have tile installed in it but is using full tillage to crop rotation and you and they also use tracks to harvest their soybean crop and so these fields were harvested they're literally right across the road from each other they were harvested within a day of each other and both had soybean both have very similar soil types I actually would argue that this this field with the no till is actually a more challenging soil than the one across the road but definitely you know the concern of traffic ability at harvest is is a major one and it's something that we need to prepare for and use all the tools we can to get to the point where we don't have to worry so much about it but but to know that that our fields are going to carry our equipment and so I think this is a really great visual because it shows literally across the road very similar soil type same crop same harvest time one harvested with tracks and that's the field that the tile drain agenda and then the other one harvested actually they were in four-wheel drive on the combine but they do not have tracks so this is a great example of how these soil health practices can actually help during harvest and here's another photo again from the southern Red River Valley where we have two fields again that were harvested about the same time both were in soybean again in this year I think this was 2018 and another wet fall for harvest and this field on the left has been in no till again for not a long period of time not it's not a 40 year no till field it's actually under 10 years probably about five years and again cover crops included in rotation and they harvested this field in two wheel drive and they loaded all their trucks on the field and not on the road so this is a really great example again of how structure is helping them build build their soils so they have better traffic ability how the cover crops are adding roots they're managing moisture they're really helping in the situation to make it less of a headache at harvest this field across the road was harvested with a combine with traps on it and has a gosh I think a corn oops excuse me a corn soybean wheat rotation I had to figure out how to go back and you can see how they they they just squiggled around this field and they had a really challenging time you can see the ruts that were left in this field and they loaded their trucks on the road so again saw how building practice is really helping create a situation that's desirable at harvest here's another example of practices that are being used where cover crops are being flown on into soybean so kind of a preventative approach where you flying cover crops prior to leaf drop in soybean to get something green and growing underneath the the crops you're gonna harvest so this really helps traffic ability helps us but just yeah basically getting across the field and having something green to drive on and granted this is a really really good catch of cover crops in soybean sometimes we don't see this especially if the canopy is is very close in the cover crops can establish this is on 15 inch row spacing so they had a little bit of room in there for the for the cover crops to get going and using this practice I would really recommend selecting a cover crop that's gonna stay low to the ground so in this case it's cereal rye I think there's some radish in there and some dwarf Essex rape seed and some plaques but all those are gonna stay low to the ground fairly fairly low to the ground and not interfere with harvest or stain any the beans or anything so but this was a really great field great catch of cover crops again if it's if you have the right conditions you get a great catch when you broadcast if you are very dry you may not get a good catch or if the canopy is too shaded you might not get establishment under there there's also you know the concern of field access and in a wet spring and what tools can you use to make that situation better so here's again two fields side-by-side in the Red River Valley so I apologize for those of you that are out of the Red River Valley but I feel like a lot of the conditions we have and that we apply here in the valley could be applied anywhere in some in some cases so we've had some really wet conditions and we have some very high clay soils creating some huge challenges so this is where we have on the left side we have a field this one is tiled full tillage practices used to crop rotation and here on the right we have a field that has a for crop rotation use of no till and cover crops so when we look at access in the spring and especially a wet spring and we look on the tools we're relying on to manage those fields in a situation where you're using tillage and not using cover crops here you're really relying on evaporation and I say just evaporation this field even though it's tiled because there's a compaction layer that's not allowing that water to get down to the tile line so this field though it could be relying on evaporation plus infiltration to get to the to move water through the tile lines it's really just relying on evaporation because that water has nowhere to go it can't go into the soil because of the tillage history on that field when we look at the one next to it we're using soil health practices like reduced tillage and cover crops we have three modes of action for for water movement we have transpiration by the plants so the cereal rye that was seeded the fall prior that is over winter is now growing in the spring it's transpiring moisture to get it out of the field we also still have some evaporation because of of course the the rye cover is not fully closed on that field so we're getting some evaporation and we're also getting that infiltration or the water movement down through the soil soil pores to a tile line if you had tile installed or to get it out of the the planting zone so I'd rather rely on three modes of action for moving water than one and this just gives you more opportunity to get moisture out of the field here's here I am walking in the field this is something I like to do I guess as soon as the field is really wet and it's a no-till field I'll walk across it and I'm in the middle of the field literally when this drone shot was taken and I here's my boot coming out of the field do very little mud on it at all that was easy to walk across granted I'm not the weight of a comb bar a tractor which thankfully I'm not but but I think that that same traffic ability is seen with heavy equipment as well here is the field next to it that is full-tillage that that I this is the first step I took in that field and I didn't I'm smart enough not to go any further so so you can see how that traffic ability you know that this is an indication of how that structure is holding up weight and it's holding it's creating an opportunity to get equipment in the field possibly I did want to show some moisture readings that I've had in fields where on the left we're just looking at residue in a no-till situation in the middle we're looking at cover crops plus no-till and then on the right we're looking at full-tillage and this was a dry fairly dry spring because one of them we have zero percent moisture on the left we have with just the residue we're sitting at at saturated so 50% moisture is pretty much saturated that means all the pores are full in that soil so you can see the residue is it's doing as hard to protect the soil but it's not helping us manage moisture and this must have been a wet condition if it was saturated it's not helping us manage moisture in that wet condition here in the middle if we add in a cover crop like cereal rye which would be seeded the fall before this and then coming up this would be in the spring we see we can cut that moisture in half by using by using a cover crop and I think that gives the safety net maybe to going to no-till knowing that you're gonna have something there to help use the moisture but also the same token it can be kind of dangerous because if the rye uses too much moisture you can get into a really dry seed bed and so it's really important if you're using cereal rye as a tool that you don't just plan it and forget it but to make sure that you're going back to check and see how much moisture is left and to terminate that rye with a herbicide if you feel like the moisture is if the planting or sorry the seed bed is getting too dry and then on the right here we have you know just this this soil is very exposed to wind erosion it didn't have any residue protected or keep moisture it didn't have a cover crop managing moisture you can actually see some of these dots back here like this one is a seed so it had been planted and now the seed is being exposed through wind erosion because the soil is just so dry and it was easily being blown away so just a great example of how to manage how to manage moisture using you know what it might be without cover crops with cover crops and then without a residue or cover crops so there's another concern it you know as a traffic ability at planting as we're kind of been talking about so here's you know seeding soybean into a living cereal rye I really like this approach and especially for high-place soils because it gives you a chance to manage moisture it improves traffic ability we're fairly confident and we've taken enough measurements and there's been enough research done to say that this practice does not hurt yield unless the termination timing on the rye is off so say say you have a really dry spring you have a lot of rye out there it uses too much moisture the soybean that you planted into it has a difficult time getting established then you're looking at being maybe a growth stage behind and in the northern parts of the state we can't afford to be a growth stage behind so so I think you know rye requires management for sure if you're going to do planting green we also know that if we're using cereal rye that we are not planting corn into this I'll show you some ways to get around that maybe but we're not putting corn into living cereal rye the competition the nitrogen tie-up all those all those factors are just are too much for it and you'll lose yields potentially and we're also not putting wheat on a rye field for reasons of seed contamination so so this really is specific to broadleaf crops like soybean some farmers are using it with sunflowers but they may be using strip till into their rye to get it away from the sunflower there's some some use of this with edible beans as well so it's just it's a good approach it's something that probably is the way if you're going to get into this if you're not into it already it's a good a good gateway to using cover crops and also reducing tillage there's also a concern about you know establishing cover crops at the late season harvested crops so corn specifically you know we don't have enough time after harvest to get a cover crop seeded especially this year since they're still standing fields so interseeding is really a great a great approach in corn so here is another example this is actually in a secondary soil of right jade town and you can see here on the left we have a 30 pound rate of cereal rye that was broadcast into corn at side dress and then on the right we have a 60 pound rate so you can see the difference in the rates this field actually got galed on two or three times in the growing season so a lot of ways it was nice to have this rye there to compete with weeds since the canopy was was so was opened up and the soils were exposed but I like the idea of looking at two different rates and this farmer has since they did this as a strip did strips of it at first to try it out and then they started adopting this practice to using the higher rates of rye broadcast into lower parts of the field where the where they may have higher clay or more moisture and then on their sandier hilltops they were I think got down to 10 pounds of rye that they were broadcasting at side dress time so so really customizing the rye that they're seeding or broadcasting to fit the the soil types on the field and moisture management conditions and so this is how it looked in the spring so here we have on the on the hilltop we're using you know 10 pounds that was broadcast and then hit the lower part of the field or the side slope we're using 60 pounds so that's a really nice compromise to avoid using too much moisture in the spring especially on on sandier soils where you can't afford to lose lose moisture when rye really gets growing and cranking so this is a nice way to get around that a practice or around that issue and or concern and and it really customized for the field and I don't think he created any kind of map for this I think he just flipped the switch or just the rates as he was going across the field he had a double tank on his side dress unit so he could put rye in one tank and he could put the fertilizer in the other and it worked really well for him you know there's also a concern that people have about when you go to the effort of interceding a cover crop and and then you harvest and does the residue that lays on top of it inhibit it from growing or using extra moisture or or kind of snuff out the cover crop and the first key to that is is residue management if you have something seated between the corn rows leave the corn stalk standing turn off the chopping head leave as you know little residue free residue kind of floating around to the ground as possible and this is this is something you know almost every farmer I work with that is in a no-till system and is using cover crops turns the chopping head off and they leave the stock standing they can deal with residue better when it's attached to the ground and standing than they can if it's laying on the ground to blow you around so this is this is a great example of doing that and then having the cereal rye and radish really start growing once that once the crop is harvested and then they're exposed to more sunlight but residue management and in all this really residue management is key and that should be your first consideration when using reduced tillage or cover crops here's another concern of using water and getting the soils to warm up with residue so I think a lot of people that have wheat residue and the field can have this concern we often talk about wheat is being a great place to include cover crops after harvest because of the time that we have to get that that cover crop growing but again it starts with residue management make sure that you're cutting the wheat as high as you can if you're if you're not using a stripper head and make sure you know if you need to you can run a drag across the field and just let it fill up with the residue and then dump it at the end of the field or remove it there's ways to get around this a stripper head is a nice option and I don't think I have a picture of that but it leaves the residue standing very tall and it keeps the residue off the ground but here we did what's called bio strip till and it was a way to to really well the basically plant cover crops on 30 inch row spacing and wheat residue to go to corn the next year and we wanted to do that because the equipment we had we could use residue managers to push the residue aside to give a little bit of a black strip we didn't you know set them deep into the soil we didn't want to cut into the soil we just wanted to kind of push it aside and then replace that where the residue is pushed aside with a cover crop and so here we have radish and fava bean and flax and 30 inch row spacing in this field went to corn the following year this is another great way to cut back on the cost of your mix because you're not seeding it over the whole field but you're just putting it in the strips where you're going to seed your next year's cash crop so this is how the strips looked this would have been in the fall after a frost so the black residue in here is actually fava bean and that's nice it's a legume if you're going to use it you should inoculate it but if the residue turns really dark and brown and so initially when I look at this I could almost mistake this for strip till as we can see our 30 inch row spacing even as we kind of get over here and here and here but it's a nice way to use residue to replace the mechanical used tillage using strip till and then if you look over here we have actually chisel plows check strips I'm going to show you some data from this on solo warming and moisture but we had chisel plow check strips across the field this is from the the share farm project that we have down in Morton so here let's see this is some data that air and day and Nate Derby collected and so I had them we had temperature and moisture sensors in the soil pretty much all year and one of the things that they did is they set up these sensors between the strips and just the residue within the strips where we had the the cover crop seeded and then we had sensors in the chisel plow strips and they think they had them from zero to five they had them at five centimeters and also 15 centimeter depth so we'll stick with a five centimeter because that's right at the surface and I think that's the where we really need these practices to work the most so let's see if we look here the gray are the readings from between the strips the orange is within the cover crop strip and then the the blue is actually just set at zero because these are all relative to what it would be with a chisel plow so we don't have the chisel plow readings but we we I don't know what you call it normalized or whatever we made this these readings in reference to the chisel plow and I had them just look at the fall because that's where the cover crop is growing and that's where we're using moisture and trying to manage moisture before going into winter so if we look at the moisture content relative to chisel plow for the between strips you can see that it's significantly it's significantly higher and if we look at it within the strips we have the cover crops look how much that dried the soil and made it more similar to the chisel plow than if we just had the residue and so I think that this is a really great tool to dry some dry those strips that we're going to plant into the next year and get some of that extra moisture out and and just really focus your cover crops on on a single strip in the fall if we look at the temperature in spring so these dates you can see are up to May there is sensors were pulled at planting around May 15th and then these are where the sensors are after so again orange is within the strips the the gray is between the strips under the residue and then we have the chisel plow line here in blue and if we look at before there's really not much difference there's no difference at all really between or a bit with the with in strips cover crops and the chisel plow we do see differences in the residue and the relative to the chisel plow so I think we we're looking here that it that the residue would be colder significantly colder than it would be in the chisel plow we move over to after planting which the farmer thought this field planted great when he put it into corn you can see that the in strips and underneath the cover crop strips it's that is actually it would be considered the same as chisel plow because we see it's not significantly different but we see a really nice trend there and then also between the strips with residue now it's it's again it's not different and that may be because of the the row planers that ran across well no that wouldn't have been run across there would it that would be between the where the corn was seeded so I would see things kind of even out after planting in in May but I think this is really promising to see to see some of these changes in temperature by using this practice and then there are other ways to kind of establish strips if you're into that kind of thing here's where where cereal rye was seeded in 30 inch row spacing and then they came back in and planted between the rye rows so and before we were planting on the cover crop row now we're planting between it and this is an attempt to get the rye away from sunflower which I think is what was planted in this field you could probably do a similar thing with corn as well but we have not tested that but if you're if you're you know if you're insistent on planting corn into rye then this is what I would do I get the rye away from where you're gonna be planting the corn also you strip tillage or residue managers in the spring to kind of get that rye away from the corn roots or from some flowers excuse me there's also a concern of using cover crops on prevent plants and I think you know given how wet we are this spring I think we we need to start thinking about prevent plants in some fields we're gonna have to use this so I've seen a lot of different fields where we've used diverse mixes that are full season then also monocultures or two species as a full season and so let's take a look at some of that first I think I think you choose whether you're gonna do a cover crop mix or use a monoculture based on your weed pressure in that field and so you obviously want to start with a clean field so you're gonna make sure that you've done a herbicide past that the weeds are cleaned up that you're not gonna have a bunch of cover crops and weeds and then you would either seed your your diverse mix or a monoculture if you have a really high weed pressure in those in a specific field then you may want to just use a monoculture so that you know if you use a grass you come back in with a broadleaf herbicide and manage that field throughout the growing season that may be the good approach to use if you have a field that has relatively low weed pressure you could always do a cover crop mix and it doesn't have to be expensive and the rates don't have to be very high so here's an example of a radish turnip sunflower ootipi mix that was by the Enderland area 20 bucks an acre and I think I saw very few weeds in this field it got they got great coverage they're very happy again their weed pressure on this field was fairly low to begin with so they went with the diverse mix and they got a really nice establishment here's that same farmer had another field where he had higher weed pressure and he actually seeded cereal rye in the middle of the summer and the nice thing about that is that cereal rye will stay very low to the ground because it needs vernalization to really sprout up and head out so a 40 to 50 pound rate 10 bucks an acre got the field covered sprayed it with herbicide once after the cover crop was established and then that rye started growing again this spring and managing moisture so that was a really great tool on that field and he felt like and that when he didn't want to spend a bunch of money and it was just you know it was one that he wanted to be able to actively manage throughout the growing season so so really picking the right cover crop mix for the field conditions for what you have going on we have a lot more information on this on the NDSU Soul Health webpage and I'm sure we'll be coming back later this summer once we get you know the rest of the crops planted we have the PP fields left we'll come back with some more information on this so that we can guide you in that and what you're gonna use so that's you know that's that's what I have for for some cover crop information I really just wanted to tailor it to what fields this spring because we're just a lot of us are dealing with so much moisture but I also want to put a few things on your calendar while you're watching this webinar and that's you know save the date for the Dirt Workshop or the Dakota Innovation Research and Technology Workshop which is December 7th through 9th in Fargo we talked a lot about grazing we talked a lot about northern North Dakota so Naim does quite a bit of planning for up there with with content and also salinity and sedicity we have Mary Keena and Mike Osley are gonna work on the grazing section for this and it's just gonna be it's gonna be a great meeting we focus a lot on networking and building relationships versus just sitting through presentations and content so really fun workshop mark your calendars for that and here's all my contact information if you have questions definitely give me a call and let me know what your questions are send me a text my email is on here we have this soil sense podcast coming out which actually started March 1st and they'll go through I think June is when the last one is is released but nd soil sense calm if you want to listen to soil health experiences from farmers consultants research extension and get some insight and ideas on what you may want to try or what you're doing and how you could tweak it a little bit but check out that resource and I think it might be might be adding something to that soon too so I'm kind of in the in the works on planning a few things that will be more remotely available versus face-to-face since we're just not sure when we're gonna be able to to get out there again but definitely give me a call or email or contact your county extension agent if you have questions and and good luck planting and getting things done this spring yeah I got a question on you know how do you determine traffic ability in a field and what are the measurements for it and and that's a great question if there are some other researchers that are that are on the on the webinar right now I haven't found a good way to do it because I feel like you need you need multiple measurements to actually tease that out and create a complete story so it just seems you know that's one we really just kind of rely on on what the farmers are saying about their experiences during planting and during harvest for traffic ability but maybe somebody else has some ideas as well I think one of the things like penetra meter is another way to check that and then visual just like the pictures you showed that would be another way to see that I think Dean is steel had done quite a bit of work on that correct oh yeah I think he has some kind of instrument that he can drag through through the soil to measure I I'm not sure I it seems like kind of a challenging thing to measure and you know traffic ability a lot of times I'll go walk across these fields and I'll say oh yeah but held me up perfectly it's a beautiful field and the farmer will say well well great it held you up but what about my equipment you know and what does that mean for when I go out there with equipment and and so it really just ends up being a maybe an experiential measurement on you know getting familiar with it getting knowing what you can and can't do on different fields based on on their level of aggregation and development of soil health yeah it'd be great if we could really measure that and I agree that the penetra meter can be helpful but nothing it's it's hard to mimic large equipment I personally think it has to translate into the practical terms for the producers and the best way is if they are not leaving any roots behind their heavy equipment to me that's the best because whatever research we do the ultimate objective is so that we could we could create the real practical solution for the producers so I agree that you know the pictures you showed they're great examples I can see that you you there was a question about did you say no tile on the cover crop field and you answer that that was to me also very interesting you know I've been battling like we have this long-term tiling project on a saline sodic piece of land and we have found out that the salt levels actually increased in 2017 and 18 compared to 16 despite the land being tiled because there was not enough water which will force the salt into the deeper depths but there was more evapotranspiration and drier weather and that led to capillary water movement or viking up and the salt's increased so the common notion that uses tile tile will work if we have access water and good infiltration so this yeah and tiling is a great tool if it's stacked with other tools you know I mean we really saw some benefits this year at the share farm in Morton on the tiled piece of ground when planting corn because you know we had we had four years of no-till on that field we were using cover crops they have a three crop rotation and the corn was was planted and it didn't the stand didn't have any issues on the tiled part we had to replant the southern part of the field where that was not tiled so it seems like there's there's a place for tiling if it's stacked with all these other tools and you're really taking advantage of of the water interception and the water infiltration that you can get to the tiled line to remove it from the field and so I think there are a lot of benefits to it you know I get asked a question a lot of times can you use these soil health practices without tiling and and I've seen it so I would say yes that you can use those practices without tiling but but tiling I mean it can help in certain fields and there are some fields that boy it would make some of these things a lot easier but but I've seen some great fields that have that have done this without without the tiling in place so I don't want that investment to be a point of kind of discouragement of like well I can't tiled so I can't do these practices or whatever that there's ways around you just have to get a pretty creative and it takes a lot of effort to I mean it does it does take using all those tools together in a way that works well with your equipment and your the people you have on hand and your operation yeah somebody mentioned bulk density to another way to measure traffic ability but I've seen that it doesn't really changes very quickly in a year or two whether it you know decreases or increases that's what I've seen from because we take bulk density samples here every year the problem with bulk density is that you have to have you have to pound these rings in to get the undisturbed course and most of the time we check it for five to 10 inches and sorry zero to five inches five to 10 inches I wish there would be a very we could take slightly deeper bulk density measurements but this is what we mostly have is there any other unanswered question Abby in the chat box or are you I don't know if is Rob still on Rob asked a question about wheat residue management and the best way to to go through that so managing wheat residue what are your general thoughts on combining by either cutting high using a straw chopper or heavy harrow to prep for the cover crop even the harrow tends to scatter rather than gather the residue and and certainly with wheat residue I I always kind of struggled with with trying to incorporate cover crops after weed I don't know why I was so why I'm so scared of it but I just feel like there's there's so much residue there that I actually will incorporate cover crops by interceding corn before I would go into it with wheat because of that issue so there you are Rob good I'm glad you're you're on the screen do you do you want to talk a little bit more about that or what you're thinking about your concerns or yeah I I don't really have a personal experience or you know directly working with a grower but I was just you know thinking in my own mind of my family and their farm they're not currently implementing a lot of cover crop practices but they they are still really mindful about the residue management following wheat just to prepare for that you know for the air seeder in the next spring and if they don't pay attention to residue management they have issues with getting the crop established so they'd combine you know trying to cut as high as possible with but they still using a straw chopper but then they're running a heavy harrow after they harvest just to kind of spread and break things up and I was just wondering if you know granted that's maybe not you know and I imagine there's other farmers who take a similar approach so if you know stripper header is maybe the ideal for being able to manage you know how the system I just described might compare yeah well I think that's a great system I know a lot of farmers are using those those practices with wheat and so it seems to work you know I mean if it's and it sounds like two based on what Aaron Day was saying if you can get that residue you know two inches or less and thickness that that would make a big difference for moisture in those soils so anything you can do to get that residue less than two inches so you're still protecting your soil but allowing for for the water management stripper headers are are great I know farmers that have bottom and they'll never turn back I know other farmers too that have bottom and then sold them you know and and not been happy with it for their system you know part of the reason I think the hang up with them is that you know they're difficult to find there they can be expensive and they're typically only used on you know on one crop and so I think I think that's kind of a barrier to it but but the fields that I've seen with just leaving the residue as tall as you can and standing is really is key and the other thing is header size so if we look at some of these these you know 40 foot 45 foot headers you know it's very difficult to get the residue spread out the back of the combine to match that header and so I know some farmers that have gone down to smaller headers to 35 foot to to make sure that they can get a good spread on residue I know that's not ideal for everybody and it's not you know that involves the change in equipment but I think you can get around those things just like you're saying with a with a heavy hero or or some kind of drag or something like that to just to get the residue spread out where you feel comfortable seating into it and not worried about hairpinning or or cover crop establishment in that in that scenario I also thought you know one slide you had one mode of action compared to three I thought that was very interesting that instead of just you know depending upon the evaporation because that's what we are doing then we are doing the tillage we are opening up the soil to dry it so we are only focusing on evaporation but when you have evaporation transpiration and infiltration I personally think Abby that I've come to learn about the importance of infiltration a lot and that's again a function of soil particle aggregation and a structure and everything but I think that we I personally think that I don't talk enough about infiltration infiltration is the key you know like for example when we look at the vet weather oh yeah there's access water but it has to go down in the soil and infiltration is the key again there. Driver there too whatever rain we get if it infiltrates into the soil there would be more plant available water for the crops to use yeah I think infiltrate I agree with that infiltration is you know I mean for example some of those you know when I showed some of that that one tiled field and I didn't include drainage as a mode of action to move water that really has it really has a compacted layer there that I I'm pretty sure in a lot of those fields I'll dig in some of those areas of standing water in a field that's been that's been worked and and I'll have you know this this wet soil on top and then as soon as I get through that compaction layer it's completely dry underneath and it's really amazing to see that because it shows you how much that compaction can hold water at the surface and not let it move through that soil and so I think you know the worst-case scenario is that you you have tile drainage installed and you're intercepting the groundwater which is really beneficial but if you're not getting that that movement of water down through the surface to the tile line you're losing half of your your ability to move water with that expensive investment and um and so trying to figure out a way to get that that water from the surface down to the tile line or down deeper in the profile where it can be stored for moisture use later is I think is is really key and if and if water is being restricted as it moves down through the profile imagine you know if roots can't go past that compacted zone to get at all those nutrients that may be down below or explore the soil that's there I mean that's a that's a real bummer too so so yeah infiltration is is key and trying to use practices which promote that infiltration one of the things I've seen if say you don't want to do the whole field and cover crops so you're thinking about this fall and you're going to use cereal rye and you're thinking wow I can't cover the acres I need to cover with cereal rye because I just don't have the time or I'm anticipating I'm not going to have the time or the manpower to do it and one of the things you could do is just go in and seed the low parts of the field or the areas that you know you have issues with water standing water or getting through them in traffic ability and maybe it's only 10 acres of a quarter but if you seed those acres with cereal rye get that in place so it can use moisture the next spring you can really hop around fields and get that work done and get it done effectively have farmers that will just seed like the you know that the headlands or something like that to get it to get that management in place there and I think that can be beneficial and then in that case say you only have 10 acres out of 180 acres that you're putting corn on I really don't care if you seed your corn right into the rye and then terminate the rye I mean you're only doing that on 10 acres and if it helps you get through that part of the field to seed the rest to plant the rest of the field then then I'd say do it but work on building the infiltration and managing the water in those areas that you really are having issues issues managing yeah I also had a situation last fall you know we had this big blizzard and first week of October and our site is tiled and I've been there to check the groundwater depths and and the water was literally sitting close to the surface less than half a feet below the surface and and then I out of curiosity I've entered the pump station and the pump station was not pumping the water because it was set up at a level there you know water had to get to a certain level and it was basically uh the water was not coming um through the tiles into that pump station very slow there is it was a standing right there so I thought okay so if if we don't improve the infiltration tiles are there but the water is not moving through the soil layers and that's going to ultimately affect how quickly we get rid of that excess water any more thoughts or questions as somebody suggested to contact Dr. Shannon um Osborn at the ARS in Brookings, South Dakota she has some data um which measured traffic ability so and then there's a coming by coming by Greg I think I just replied because I know Greg knows that field oh really well and so he can probably imagine me driving with that farmer across that field and seeing I mean we literally went through standing water on it and just went right through um and that was pretty amazing so I don't know Greg if you want to add anything because you've been working closely with with farmers in that area too. I was just, Abby knows that I can get lengthy when I talk. That same field that Abby was talking about and showed the pictures of was barley last year and we only had volunteer barley on it after harvest because we couldn't get the rye established but this spring the residual effects of that barley using moisture and that no till it looks absolutely incredible and same with the rest of the farm you know very little rye done last fall except for in the soybean fields and there again there wasn't much at harvest time but now they're greening up and looking really nice and those fields look just as good if not better than all the fields around other than maybe premium crop sugar beets so yeah that traffic ability but the big thing is those wheel tracks at harvest time the last two wet falls on the one field with tile or with no till and in cover crops there's no water in those tracks so it shows that that water moved down through those tracks and versus the ones that were mutted out at harvest time those ruts are still full of water this spring. Greg have you been pretty impressed with how quickly those fields have come around? It's unbelievable. In one of the measurements that I use for traffic ability or compaction is that soil probe in my truck you know a lot of the fields that are around that one that you know of abbey my my probe gets my truck almost gets lifted off the ground trying to probe those heavy clay soils and in my no till fields there's very little resistance to cut through that two feet and the healing from underneath is faster than even the surface healing so you know that soil just you know there again it gets to be all about infiltration that that improves so quickly in these clay soils. Yeah sometimes I'm fascinated how quickly soils can rehabilitate themselves if we give them a little bit of chance that's the key I think depending upon the system and depending upon the year but you know we could sometimes some soil properties can improve quite fast like organic matter increasing the organic matter may take some time but infiltration could be improved quite quickly compared to for example some other like lowering the pH for example or increasing organic matter percent and then that's these these properties are also very helpful. I was looking about one um so I mean serial rise obviously kind of a fall practice that would be put in place for next year to manage but I was thinking about some of the things we could do this spring say your fields are wet and you need to get soybean planted and you're you may mud it in a little bit depending on how things look um and maybe you have some iron deficiency chlorosis issues as well which can be exacerbated by some wet conditions and so Dave Franzen and I put together a soil health minute article for this past week um talking about using oats with soybean and so having the oats in there to grow with soybean manage some of the moisture and the nitrogen and help the soybean get established and and grow so that may be a practice that that people want to try the spring if you feel like the field is just a little bit too wet and you're worried about the soybean establishment or stand you could try some oats um oats in there or barley as well um and there's a the farmer there's a farmer over in Minnesota that's that's done some of that and and done some trials side by side and he um he put in about a bushel oats with his soybean and and he was very happy with uh with the establishment so if you have IDC issues that may be something you look at this spring to be proactive and start using some covered crops in your system uh Greg you wanted to say something I was just saying we have another large um couple field dung north of Wapiton that got abused pretty bad last year just from the fact that uh they were pumping um pond water out of the uh sugar beet ponds because they had to fix a pond liner and stuff like that and so we were kind of wet in the spring and and then in the summer they injected another 20 000 gallons of water per acre and we got wet and rainy and and it didn't look very good we could get the ruts leveled out but we went out there thinking okay we need some dry cover crop on there so we broadcasted 90 pounds per acre because it was now dry and we didn't have a very good seed bed and we hit it with a McFarland drag twice we got a half an inch of rain on it and now every seed grew so uh we have 90 pounds of very dense cover and growers a little concerned because the air movement isn't there yet but I've got to just kind of walk them through that whole transpiration and infiltration aspect there yeah and we're going to be planting soybeans in there so it'll be a fun one to follow but I think just for reclamation of the ground is uh going to be very fun to to show them how that occurs any more comments or questions any suggestions say Greg if I ever get to leave the house again I want to come see that field well Ken I can give you locations if you want to sneak down the interstate it's just south of Abercrombie so um I'm going to tell you not because this is being recorded right now and somebody may hear if I may sure sure yeah that's not may as an operative word uh but the I've got a message into uh Steve up there at Carrington to see if if they've ever used uh plant growth regulator Palisade on those really thick stands to see if it would shorten up the straw enough to where we wouldn't have the lodging we may try and keep um 80 acres out of that field just for harvest but it would be a way of of taking some of these to yield without the management concerns when we actually are very successful in establishing a stand nice but I like this format I think uh you know it's a way for you know even in the future to do you know to expand your cafe talks live yeah I like this format too I think it's been really good um it's been really good and and honestly if people have more specific questions I'm happy to if you if you know of 10 people that want to just hop on a zoom call and talk through ideas this works really really well with 10 people or so um to just kick around ideas and talk about how to how you're going to tackle something so it could work really well say if if somebody has a few neighbors that want to talk about cover crops or get some ideas and um or you know then this is a really good way to get some of those ideas shared you'll just have to have it from your kitchen so you can call it a cafe talk right oh man we could name it differently kitchen talk or a living room talk uh you have a low a couple loaves of bread and you can call it uh breaking bread session there we go no oh there's a suggestion for that your maté enlightenment yeah oh here we go here's one I'm using oats for a couple of years seeded with soybean to help prevent soil erosion after rolling and for other agronomic advantages so yeah Todd and it sounds like it's worked really well did you want to talk about your experience with that at all or or share some tips you may have um yeah we've been seeding notes with the beans putting in a different box in the cedar and um mainly we've been having trouble with soil erosion, wind erosion after we rolled the fields and it seemed like it's helped um you have to be mindful when when you spray you not let the oats get too far along and take over the field but um it seems to have some other advantages just to have another crop going out there even though I don't like them right next to the soybeans plants but um it doesn't seem to bother too much I guess what is it's a great way to get more plants into the system right and and to build up below that reservoir I know sometimes we focus so much on trying to get a cover crop after soybean and trying to fly it in or to um to get some some residue that way but oftentimes like you're like you're doing planting the oats with the soybean to get some more residue in the system and the front end and then hopefully it sticks around until after harvest um could be a really good approach too and I bet you get a little bit better weed management too with that do you did you say do you roll the the oats down after after you terminate them or no no we just um we just plant the oats with the beans and um then you know we come back with the roller to put the rocks in the ground and um then we just eliminate the oats later on with the herbicide did you find any difference like normally when we roll soybeans and if the weather is dry there's quite a bit of soil blowing away did you find a different very you well that's that's the whole reason the whole purpose of doing it but um the last couple years we haven't had as much trouble with the the wind erosion it just depends on the conditions and the weather but I think it would it would help to a certain extent and anything anything at all to hold the soil down it's so worst feeling you have when you see your soil blowing away yeah thank you all for joining us today we'll be back next Tuesday at 11 and we'll switch gears a bit uh next Tuesday our speaker would be Dr. Marisol Birdie and um Dr. Birdie will she'll basically talk about selecting different cover crop mixes for different cropping systems so it'll be same link if you wanted to call in I could see that today we had one person um who was calling in um I didn't know who but I think it was a Minnesota number so uh same number same link same time Tuesday and Thursday uh for two more weeks well thanks again and see you guys on Tuesday see you see you