Let’s head to Otwell, Ind., for our Video of the Week. Strip-Till Innovator Chris Perkins shows us how he’s incorporating cover crops in his strip-till system, while managing 300-bushel corn residue.

“Run a StalkMaster head from Deere and then I come out here with my Great Plains drill, and we drilled 20 pounds of oats, 15 pounds of barley, 8 pounds of clover and 2 pounds of mustard. We’re trying to stay green in between and obviously now we’re making our strip-till application. This was planted on September 27 with the drill. Overall, I’m really happy and pleased with what I’m seeing out of the berm. I want that berm kind of chunky. There is no fertilizer right now. We’ll come back next spring with the corn-on-corn application and that’s when we’ll put down all our nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, zinc, all that stuff. We’re kind of giving it a highway so it dries out next spring. That’s what we did this past year, and it worked well for us. We were green in between and we had our nice clean highway. That’s a lot of residue we’re trying to go through, but that’s the name of the game — plants feed the soil, soil feeds the next set of plants.”  

Watch the full Video of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.