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He Strip-Tills Fertilizer In Fall, Plants In Spring
"It lets us deep band dry fertilizer and anhydrous in the fall while at the same time clearing narrow strips of soil to plant into in the spring," says Lowell Filbrun, Fletcher, Ohio, who rigged up his own fall "strip till" applicator.
Filbrun explains that the cleared row strips warm up fast in the spring. "Lets me plant into a dry, garden-like seedbed without disturbing residue on either side of the row," he says.
Filbrun mounted a 6-row, 30-in. 3-pt. Kinze double toolbar (minus the Kinze planter units) on an old drill caddy and mounted dry fertilizer boxes off an International planter on top of the rear toolbar. He mounted Blu-Jet 20-in. fluted coulters at an angle on the front bar followed by anhydrous knives and anhydrous disc sealers. Anhydrous and dry fertilizer are both deep banded directly behind the knives. A hitch behind the toolbar is used to pull an anhydrous ammonia tank.
"The big problem with row-clearing trash wheels mounted on planters is that row units follow right behind them so you plant into cold, moist soil after the residue is cleared," notes Filbrun. "Another big benefit of fall strip-till is that we already have our starter fertilizer on when we plant and deep banding fertilizer under the row makes it more available to the plant. Also, we can apply more starter fertilizer with our strip-till applicator than we could with planter. We still apply a little liquid starter fertilizer when we plant - about 50 lbs. per acre.
"We use strip-till only to plant corn into soybeans. We don't plant corn after corn, but it would probably work in corn stalks."
The Kinze toolbar still had the original markers which Filbrun uses to keep rows straight. He paid $500 for the fertilizer boxes and $1,500 for the Blu-Jet coulters, which he bought new. He already had the Kinze toolbar.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Lowell Filbrun, L.E. Filbrun Farms, Inc., 7285 Ballou Rd., Fletcher, Ohio 45326 (ph 513 368-3969).


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1993 - Volume #17, Issue #5