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On this episode of the Strip-Till Farmer podcast, brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment, we get the inside scoop on the NCGA Yield Contest-Winning plot in Lake City, Iowa.

Mark Schleisman and his family swept the strip-till irrigated competition in the Hawkeye State in 2025. Mark won the title with 317 bushels per acre. His wife, Melissa was second with 311.9 bushels and their son, Matthew, was third with 311.7 bushels.

Schleisman details his strip-till equipment setup, which includes a 24-row setup capable of applying fertilizer with shanks in the fall and coulters in the spring. He also shares his contest-winning formula and explains how he uses 3 different application methods for cover crops.

The Strip-Till Farmer podcast is brought to you by Yetter Farm Equipment.

Since 1930, Yetter Farm Equipment has been providing farmers with profitable solutions. From residue management and fertilizer placement to seedbed preparation, our equipment is designed to maximize your inputs, save you time, and deliver a strong return on investment. Explore our full line of planter attachments, precision fertilizer placement options, strip-till units, and stalk rollers at yetterco.com. Let Yetter help you prepare your equipment lineup for success today.

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Full Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast. I'm your host, Noah Newman. Thanks to our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast series possible. We'll share a special message from Yetter later in the program.

Today we're getting the inside scoop on the NCGA yield contest winning plot in Lake City, Iowa. Mark Schleisman and his family swept the strip-till irrigated competition in the Hawkeye State in 2025. So Mark won the title with 317 bushels per acre, but his wife Melissa was a close second with 311.9 bushels and their son Matthew was right there in third place with 311.7 bushels. Schleisman will detail a Strip-Till equipment set up, which includes a 24 row machine capable of applying fertilizer with shanks in the fall and then coulters in the spring. He also shares his contest winning formula and explains how he uses three different application methods for cover crops.

Here's Mark.

I'm kind of a latecomer to farming, I guess. I was an agronomist out in Western Nebraska for a while and when I worked for ConAgra Foods and managing their popcorn production. So I didn't start farming full-time until about 2010, '11. And shortly thereafter, about '12, '13 is when we started messing around with strip-till and kind of did it a cheap way, just kind of following anhydrous marks with the planter. And then we built our own strip-till machine, which was more of a freshener than a machine that could handle a lot of trash. So we ran some yetter units, fresher units for about four years. And just this year we went to more of a true strip-till machine that can do fall tillage as well. So we're running a Lynx machine now with the shank in the fall, putting dry down. And then we switched that over to coulters in the spring and just put some 32 in there with some diosulfate.

Oh, nice. And how big is the bar? 12 row, 16 row?

24 row.

24 row. Okay. All right. Yeah. So you're making strips in the fall with the shank. And then what are you applying in the fall?

Well, our corn-on-corn is where we use the fall shank machine. It's where we got more trash to work with. And so we're putting dry on. We're putting a little bit of gypsum down, SO4. If we need any phosphorus, we'll put it on then. We typically don't need much. Our levels are pretty good because a lot of the manure also in our operation. We'll put some potassium down there as well. Main thing we're looking at is not so much the nutrients, but to keep our nutrients from stratifying because we use a lot of manure. So we're wanting to do a deep pass in that fall at operation on the corn-on-corn acres.

Interesting. Yeah. Tell me about your manure applications. When are you applying that and about how much? How does that work?

Well, we have two sources. We have a lot of confinement hogs. So all of our liquid manure is supplied with a coulter, a no-till coulter, and then putting the liquid down behind it. We try to spread our manure over quite a few acres and then supplement some with our strip-till with just 32%. So we'll put down between 2,500 and 3,500 gallon in the fall. And the fields that don't get fall hog manure will get dry pack cattle manure. And we typically run about seven and a half to 10 ton of cattle when we're on those fields.

And so you're-

It's broadcast on top because it's solid.

And so then you're running the strip-till rig after the manure is applied?

Generally, yes.

Okay. Are you-

We always run it in the spring again as a freshener too. And our corn after soybeans just gets the coulter in the spring, the strip-till coulter. We don't run the shank on it. We just run the shank on the corn-on-corn acres.

And that's just to deal with all the heavy residue?

Heavy residue and we don't want all those manure applications to get stratified just in the surface. So that's why we run a deep operation once every three years.

Okay. And are you strip-tilling all your acres or are you no-till on some?

We no-till our soybeans and then we'll go after our soybeans, we'll run either field corner or popcorn with just the coulter strip-till machine. And then after the corner popcorn, we'll come back in with field corn again with the deep shank in the fall and then the freshener in the spring.

Now, are you implementing any cover crops in your strip-till system?

100% cover crops, every acre. Corn, soybeans, doesn't matter, it gets cover crop in the fall.

And what does that look like? Is that a mix or mainly cereal rye or what and how are you applying?

Cereal rye is always our base, but we always run a mix as well. Either we'll have oats with it if it's something we're going to graze heavily in the fall, if it's not going to get grazed heavily in the fall, we'll just run rape, sometimes turnips or radishes, but primarily rape with our rye.

Okay. And how are you applying that? With the drill or...

We do multiple ways, depending on the field. If it's a field with a lot of point rows, we'll go ahead and do it with a drone. If it's soybean fields that are going to come off early, we got a vertical till machine set up with an air cedar on the front of it, and some of the corn acres will come in with a high clearance machine that has an air machine on it as well.

Okay.

So we utilize three different methods every year. Just kind of pick and choose the fields we think that machine's going to work the best on. Depending on maturity of the crop we're following, if it's going to come off early enough to use that vertical till, that's what we'd prefer to do, but if it's not going to come off early enough to get some growth with that vertical till cedar, we'll try to put it on by air or by high clearance machine.

And then what would you say are the top benefits of cover crops for you and for strip-tillers who maybe aren't using cover crops yet? I know a lot of the strip-tillers I talked to are using cover crops. I'm sure some still aren't. What would you say? What are the biggest benefits of that?

Well, I think our cover crops, honestly, our full width tillage, it replaces that. The root system from that rye or the rape and radishes, what have you out there, that's our tillage, full width because you got cover crop growing everywhere. For us, that loosens the soil, opens it up, creates the channels for the water to infiltrate. We just think it does everything for us. And then it also aids in weed control, no doubt about that.

Yeah, that's a big one. All right. Well, hey, we could jump into this contest winning plot now. And yeah, so you won the state title for yield in the strip-till non-irrigated category. How long have you been doing these high yielding plots? Have you been doing these for a while?

We have. It's probably been our fifth or sixth year doing them. We try to try new things on them, try to learn what we can do in other places across all of our acres. Maybe some work across everything and some don't, but we'll try a lot of that on our high yield trials.

Yeah. So let's dive into some of that with this one, this past year, that won the state title. Can we just go through the whole process of the plot? And I guess starting in the fall, tell us about the field, maybe the soil type, and the first thing you did after harvest for this one.

The previous fall, it would've been popcorn on that field. It would've been grazed. It had cover crop put on the popcorn, rye and rape in this case. In that particular one, we did not do any fall strip-till. We did all spring strip-till with a coulter. It had hog manure put on in the fall into the growing cover crop. I think we put on 3,500 gallon of hog manure with a coulter in the growing cover crop. In the spring then we came back with the strip-till in the spring, applied 10 gallon of 32% and three gallon ammonium thiosulfate in the strip, planted corn.

 In this particular field, I believe we were able to terminate the cover crop prior to planting by about, I think it was about five days before. We terminated the cover crop. Sometimes that's not the case, just pending weather. If we got a period of colder weather and we're still planting, we'll wait and terminate after we plant, but in this case it was done before. It had a script on the population, so it varied from 32,000 on up to 38,000 in the strip. We would've side dressed this field with Y-drops and put on another 10 gallon of 32, three gallons of thiosulfate. I think one of the keys to this one was we double fungicided it. This area had a lot of southern rust last year, and that second fungicide application really seemed to pay. And I did that on all of our plot acres and all of our other irrigated acres. I wish I would've done it on more acres, more of our dry land acres too.

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Yeah, so let's go into some of the nuts and bolts of this. Do you remember the exact planting date of when you planted and then around the exact timeframe of when you made strips and then when you terminated and then when you planted?

Yep. The strips would've been done that last week or so of April and it was terminated early on that last week of April. Like I said, about five days before we went in and strip-tilled and then followed with the planter. It was right around the 1st of May when this corn was planted. It wasn't our first planted. It was towards the last two thirds of our plantings probably.

And then what was the hybrid and what went into your decision making of choosing this particular hybrid?

In that particular field, we actually had the first and second places and that I think it was my wife had the other entry, but the winning hybrid was a Merschman's 2512 C-30 and the second place one was Pioneer 14830, and they were very close together in yield. Soil type on that field, it is irrigated. It's more of a sandy loam, so it has some heavy spots, but most of it's a sandy loam type soil. We didn't have to irrigate a lot last year. I think I actually should have irrigated a little bit more. As hot and dry as it got in August, we thought we had enough subsoil moisture. I ended up irrigating about the 10th of August, and then again about the 20th of August, because we just got too dry and too hot fast. So I did receive about three inches of water and I probably should have put on four, should have started a week earlier, I think, but that's hindsight.

Yeah. Yeah. Still worked out well, obviously.

Yeah.

And then just kind of diving into more of the timeframes, about when did you come in and side dress? And then after the side dress, when did you make those two fungicide applications?

We would've side dressed at about 13 leaf or so. It was a little later than I wanted, but that was again because we had had received so much rain, so it probably turned out to be an okay deal to have waited, so we didn't lose any of that nitrogen. The first fungicide was put on just pre-tassel or right as tassels are starting to emerge, and then the second fungicide was put on two weeks later. The first fungicide we used Veltyma from BASF was our first application, and then it was just generic quilt the second time.

Gotcha. And outside of... Oh, go ahead.

And honestly, the reason we were kind of geared up to do two treatments of fungicide is we've seen some tar spot in our irrigated fields historically, but it turned out that we really didn't have tar spot. It wasn't the problem. It was southern rust.

Oh, okay. And outside of the side dressing and then the fungicide applications, did you make any other applications throughout the summer?

Yeah, we had two boron applications. About five leaf was the first one, pint of boron, and then again at about 13 leaf, another pint of boron. With the fungicide, the first fungicide application prior to tassel had a micronutrient pack that was in there as well. And then at planting time, we would've used the Meristem hopper throttle product with Guard X to help out with the root worm control as well as provide some zinc and the biologicals that are in the hopper throttle.

Okay.

That was done as a seed treatment.

What would you say is... The boron applications, what are the big benefits of that?

We've just seen it help the corn get through the stresses of some herbicide applications, but more than anything, it helps set up good seed set. Boron's critical in pollination, so that's where the ultimate benefit seems to come from.

And then fall rolls around. When are you harvesting and are you doing anything in particular at harvest to maximize yield or set the field up for the following season or anything unique?

We try. We always have good goals to get out there earlier and harvest these plots when it's 26, 27% moisture, because we know there's some phantom yield loss below that, but our farm grows a lot of popcorn and a lot of seed production of popcorn and soybean seed production. And we never seemed to get it harvested at that should probably maximize yield. I believe this corn was about 17% moisture when we harvested it. So it stood in the field longer than I wanted it to, but it stood great. No standability issues at all. It actually was very, very healthy looking corn even that late in the season to get... It's a full season hybrid for here and to get the moisture down to 17, it was still standing good.

And then what was the harvest population? Do you know off the top of your head?

We script planted it, like I said, from 32 to 38, but I'd say our average was pretty close to 35.

And then what would you say are just some key takeaways from this contest plot or some lessons learned that maybe you'll apply to the rest of your acres?

Well, I think it validates, for us anyway, our highest yields aren't necessarily our first planted fields. If we could get everything planted that last couple days of April, first five days of May, I think that's where we get our most uniform and best stand on the contest fields that it really shows up. I know we can't get everything planted in that short window depending on weather, so we tend to plant some a little bit earlier, but I just think generally cool weather inhibits uniform emergence sometimes when we do that. So we're probably not pushing as early as we maybe did five years ago. We're concentrating more on beans in the early part of our planting season and then switching over to corn as soils get good and warm. And I think it was a very wet year here. We had lots and lots of rain until early August.

Big benefit is spreading out those nitrogen applications between hog manure in the fall, spring strips, and then your Y-drops, just not putting all your nitrogen eggs in one basket.

Gotcha. I think that's all the questions I have. Anything new you're looking to try as planting season's coming up here soon? Anything new you're doing this year in your strip-till system?

We got a few more biological products we're trying. I can't say there are any secrets. They're just some newer products that are out there trying to see how they perform.

And that'll wrap things up for this edition of the Strip-Till Farmer Podcast. Big thanks to Mark Schleisman for taking the time out of his busy day to speak with us. Thanks once again to our sponsor, Yetter Farm Equipment for making this podcast series possible. Head to yetterco.com to learn more about Yetter's offerings. And hey, if you want to learn more about the National Strip-Tillage Conference, August 6th and 7th in Springfield, Illinois, head to striptillconference.com. We have the full program coming out here very soon. Until next time, for all things strip-till, head to striptillfarmer.com. I'm Noah Newman. Thanks for tuning in. See you.