skrauling

South East Minnesota used to raise a lot of wheat. Old timers can still recall seeing it raised here but the area tends to get a little too much rain at the wrong time and corn grows really well here so they just gradually quit growing it here. We need a three year rotation and have settled on wheat as one of those crops. Generally we plant winter wheat in September but this is spring wheat in April!

This is what I like to see during first row crop cultivation. Soil flowing into the row to bury weeds. There are a lot of root balls from a dense cover crop so the shields are extra important to prevent us from burying the corn.

Mechanical weed control in standing oats. Weeds have stuff stems, oats are still in the grassy, wispy stage. This allows the oat leaves to flow through the combcut while the stiff weeds are cut by the knives. Here, we’re battling thistles. Every time we cut off the thistles, they lose some of their competitive advantage over your crop, produce fewer seeds and fewer rhizomes.

Weeds are sprouting. 3-5 days after corn planting, if conditions are right, the tine Weeder is a great tool to kill weeds. When they are in the white fibrous root stage and not yet above ground, these tines will break up those roots and kill the weeds before they can establish themselves, allowing the corn to establish as the dominant plants in the field. It’s all about gaining a size advantage over the weeds… the bigger the difference, the more aggressively we can attack the weeds. Timing is extremely crucial, especially on these first weeding passes.

If you’ve ever had a garden, you know about weeds! As an organic farmer, we use different methods of weed control than our conventional counterparts. Cultivation is the art of throwing soil. Our goal is to kill weeds by ripping them out or burying them before they establish themselves and rob our crop of nutrients. Enjoy!

A different style header on our combine than you may be used to seeing. This header strips the seed off of the stalks and leaves most of the stalk. Less material going through the combine makes this more efficient! Thank you for watching!

This is a fun, short video showing our row crop cultivator in our organic corn. We’re killing weeds , many before they emerge, and giving our crop a better chance to shade out late emerging weeds with a strong canopy! Thank you for watching!