More than a year of bone-dry weather in the Corn Belt and Great Plains may dim our memories of the 2009 harvest, when fields in some states turned into swamps and harvest stretched into March 2010.

If any good came out of that wet, difficult harvest, it may be that it helped some strip-tillers enhance their strip-till system with vertical tillage. At the 2012 National No-Tillage Conference last winter, Illinois strip-tiller Jeff Martin shared how he and his son, Doug, used a vertical-tillage tool in the spring of 2010 to rehabilitate farm ground after the wet fall in 2009 severely limited fall strip-till.

The Martins have continued to use vertical tillage to enhance their strip-till system and it’s something more and more strip-tillers are doing, as University of Minnesota crops and tillage educator Jodi DeJong-Hughes discusses in the lead story of this week’s Strip-Till Strategies.

With a wide array a conferences and trade shows beckoning during the winter, strip-tillers may wonder where they should invest their time and money. Just 3 months from now, there’s a great opportunity to listen and learn from strip-tillers at the 2013 National No-Tillage Conference, Jan. 9-12, in Indianapolis. You can check out the program or register for the conference by clicking here.