I farm near Stillman Valley, Ill., where we have about 80% highly erodible land (HEL). I’ve been continuous no-till for several years, and I strip-till all my corn-on-corn acres. 

Residue cover is critical to maintaining soil structure. But with corn yields averaging more than 200 bushels per acre, I need an effective strategy for breaking all that heavy residue down.

Building a System

With strip-till, you need to put a system together that fits what you want to accomplish. What one farmer sees as a good corn stand, another might find unacceptable. The way you implement strip-till must work for your soils, your equipment and what you can tolerate.

My system starts with the combine. I use Calmer Chopping Rolls, which reduce the length of the residue and confine it to the row. I want the old stalk to stay where it is, so I don’t have to deal with it where I’ll be planting.

I use an 8-row Dawn Pluribus strip-till bar with coulters because I don’t need a big shank in my system. I’m trying to move residue and dry out the strip a bit, which is crucial in northern Illinois. 

RTK helps me stay on the strip, but it’s not perfect. My rows can drift up to 15 inches. That’s why the planter must be ready for off-strip planting. I’ve had as much as a 50-bushel yield hit when I was off the row and not equipped to handle it.

Off-Row Planting

My planter is set up for no-till and corn-on-corn because it needs to be able to handle situations where the strip is missed. Our fields aren’t square — I’ve got contours and terraces. If you get off the row, and your planter can’t handle no-till corn-on-corn, the yield penalty is huge. I’m using Martin closing wheels, Dawn residue movers, hydraulic down force and John Deere single disc fertilizer openers. Also, in a strip-till environment, closing chains pull the furrow shut a little bit. 

I apply nitrogen (N) several ways — in-furrow, sidedress with a Fast bar, and sometimes late-season through drop nozzles on my Hagie 2100 sprayer. It’s simple, inexpensive, and flexible. If one part of the system fails, the others help carry the load.

My sprayer is probably the most used piece of equipment on the farm. It’s not fancy, but it covers a lot of ground, and it helps me scout. That’s where I see things like waterhemp or pokeweed before they become real problems.

Planting Green

Cover crops really changed how I farm. They accelerate residue breakdown and improve soil health. By August, the only corn stalks left from the year before are the ones still standing. 

I’ll drill cereal rye at a rate of 60 pounds per acre with a 750 drill — which I call my vertical-till tool — to get it in after harvest. 

I’ve planted into 12-14 inches of standing rye and watched it disappear in a few weeks. If you have a good rye cover crop, it’s like strip-tilling into a Brillo pad. The root mass holds the soil together and my planter handles it fine.

The biggest surprise was how well I could plant soybeans into 6-foot-tall cereal rye. I learned that by accident one year. The yield was within a bushel of normal, and the weed suppression and soil health benefits were huge.

Words of Advice

If you’re thinking about trying strip-till corn-on-corn, start small, make mistakes and learn. Don’t try something you won’t find acceptable. If you’ve got 10 acres hidden in the back, use that to push the limits and test your ideas.

Farmers love iron. I get it. But the smallest part of the whole system is the strip-till bar. It’s not about the iron — it’s about how all the pieces work together. Whether it’s N timing, residue management, cover crops, or planter setup, every piece counts.

On my farm, strip-till corn-on-corn is profitable and repeatable. My yields are within a couple bushels — sometimes better — than corn after beans. That’s not just luck. That’s a system.