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Hoorman Soil Health Services

  Farmers are finally getting moisture; rain, snow, and even ice. Recent rains followed by colder temperatures has restored some soil moisture. The slow steady rains have soaked in rather than running off. Waterways finally did fill up with water; but it took a long time. That is both good news for future crops planted next year, but also for water quality. Slow steady rains release much less nutrients into our waterways than fast hard driving rainfall events.  Farmers do not know what the weather will be like this next year but hotter and drier summers are expected. Rain in summer generally makes grain, as long as it comes in moderation. An inch of fully used rainfall generally results in a minimum of 8-bushel corn, 3.5-bushel soybeans, and 6-bushel wheat. However, if moisture occurs when corn is tasseling (mid-July), soybeans are blooming (late July through mid-August) or wheat starting to bloom (mid-May to early June) expect higher yields. Moisture is critical for high yiel...

  Dr. Manbir Rakkar, assistant professor of nutrient management, took over for Dr. Stephen Culman at Ohio State University. She shared that Hoytville and Wooster have two of the longest-running soil quality research experiments. Started in 1962, over 100 research publications have been published on this research. This research was started by soil quality and no-till pioneers, Dr. Grover Triplett and Dr. David Van Doorhan, both deceased. These pioneers had three basic research questions they wanted to answer. First, how much tillage, if any, is required to grow a good crop? Second, how do tillage and crop rotation affect crop yields? Third, how does tillage or no-till vary by soil type? All good questions, still being debated! To answer these questions, they set up long-term plots at Hoytville on a flat (0-2%) heavy clay soil (Hoytville) and at Wooster on a silt loam soil with 6-10% slope. The tillage was continuous no-till, chisel plow, and moldboard plow. They included crop rotati...