00:00 Is tillage necessary to prevent nutrient stratification? That's the question we're gonna answer in this episode 00:06 of extreme Ag Cutting the curve. Welcome To extreme Ag Cutting the Curve podcast, where real farmers share real insights 00:14 and real results to help you improve your farming operation. This episode is brought to you by Simon Innovation, 00:21 protect your crops and maximize yield with a full lineup of innovative precision tools engineered 00:26 to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of your sprayer. Visit simon innovations.com and start getting more ROI out of your sprayer. 00:34 And now here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode of Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve. 00:42 I'm joined by Connor, sometimes known as Vern Garrett. He is, uh, generation number five or six. He's going to help me out here at Garrett Land 00:49 and Cattle, uh, of, uh, Crawford County, Iowa. Kelly Garrett is his father. I'm wearing their hat, Garrett Land and Cattle. 00:55 The reason I have him on here is because he's an agronomy grad from Iowa State University and he's essentially a soils geek. 01:02 He kind of does get kind of nerded out on this stuff. And I like it because we're talking about soils and we're talking about practices specifically. 01:09 I was at the Garrett Farm in December. I took a picture of their manure, uh, modified manure, uh, hauling rig, which is, uh, handled liquid 01:19 and they were putting plant food as they are in the plant food business on top of ground. I posted on social media 01:25 and talked about the benefits of this and what do you know? Some know-it-all that has to criticize everybody on a 01:30 and on social media said, that ain't gonna do no good if you don't incorporate it. And I have heard these sorts of things before. 01:38 I heard this as a dairy farm kid growing up that you only get benefit from manure if you plow it in. I wondered about that my entire life. 01:46 I still think this is wrong. And then I said, let's talk about nutrient stratification. So then I've set this up perfectly, Vern, do I need to till 01:55 to get the nutrients down into the soil? Uh, I'm gonna say absolutely not. Um, I think that trying 02:06 to solve nutrient stratification with tillage is kinda like you stub your toe and you decide to cut it off to fix it. 02:11 Fix you're making a small problem into bigger problems that are hurting you more down the line. Now, when I look at plant food or manure 02:19 and take it versus dry p and k, that's what most no-till guys are using as well. How is no-till working at all? Right? 02:26 I mean, that dry needs rain to, uh, dissolve it into solution and take it down into the soil. And our plant food is just skipping that step. 02:34 So I don't understand why it's worse right off the bat. It just smells fishy to me. How, how are we getting fertility at all? 02:40 Yeah. So, uh, the, the, the first thing you're throwing out there is tillage, which we know better now, 02:47 and your data is really getting into this regenerative journey. And, you know, great Gabe Brown's book talks a lot 02:52 about, uh, ender to soil. He talks a lot about the damage to soil health, the soil structure in particular through over tillage. 02:59 There's a place in time for tillage. I, I'm sure, but yeah, yeah. What we're, what you're saying, 03:04 your first statement there was, which I everybody loves, write it down, dear listener, doing a bunch of tillage 03:11 to fix nutrient stratification is like cutting off your toe because you stubbed it. Okay? Yeah, you'd have a little problem, you gotta st toe, 03:16 but for god's sakes, now you're doing what could be everlasting damage, um, by cutting it off. So when you look at 03:24 nutrients not getting down the soil profile, it does happen eventually. Otherwise, as you said, no till wouldn't work at all if 03:35 nutrients didn't move up and down the profile. Correct. We, I mean, look at our NCGA entries. We've posted some pretty big yields with plant food 03:43 as our main source of PK and s and, you know, how are we even getting fertility to the plant? 03:49 Okay. And that's on no-till or re Utility. Yes, that's on all, all of our entries 03:53 or, uh, we've had one entry in that placed in strip till, but by 03:58 and large, all of our entries have been in no-till irrigated class. And so let's, I mean, let's think about how this works. 04:06 Uh, it's definitely a concern. Nutrient stratification at no-till, if you just apply that dry to the top year after year 04:11 after year, you're gonna build up your levels in the top two inches or so, and it's, 04:15 it's gonna have a harder time getting down there. But there are ways around that without tillage. And I would argue that you're still better 04:23 off than going with tillage. And I'll explain that. Um, first of all, let's think about a natural system, right? 04:29 The residues are going to end up on the surface, whether that's your leaf grass, whatever, in a native prairie, 04:35 they all, all your nutrient application, as it were, is going to be on the surface anyway. And through the building of that natural soil, 04:43 the natural weathering, creating that good black Iowa dirt, you're gon, you're building soil organic matter, 04:51 you're building structure, you're building biology. And through those root channels, through all this biological process, 04:59 the fertility is moving down through the profile naturally. And we're trying to mimic that in an no-till system. 05:06 Okay? So the point you're making is the prairie soils in Iowa or Southern Minnesota, 05:12 wherever anything actually they were, they were created without tillage. So we didn't, we didn't get, we didn't build six feet 05:20 of top soil in Champaign Illinois by tilling the hell out of it because that six feet of soil, we never tiled it 05:27 until 150 years ago that that top soil was created, uh, uh, in a natural system where clearly nutrients got from up and down the soil profile. 05:38 Correct? Correct. And so I, once you have that perspective, and what we wanna do is build a biologically healthy living 05:46 soil out in our no-till system, and the number one thing we're gonna do, and we till is destroy that. 05:51 We're going to chop up all that residue. We're gonna burn and oxidize it. We're gonna burn and oxidize our biology. 05:57 Um, we're gonna destroy our organic matter and all that, all those root channels, that structure that's gonna allow the moisture 06:05 and nutrients to move down through the profile. Now we destroyed that. Now we are, it's right. So maybe we got a nice one year bump when 06:13 we tilled and moved it down. But now we've created much longer term problems. And that's where I'm coming at it from the 06:18 chopping your toe off angle. Yeah. Okay. So what I like about that is there's people that are listening to us, they're saying, 06:23 wait a minute, come on now. He just said destroyed organic matter. Tillers doesn't destroy organic matter. 06:27 I, I've sat in on sessions, you more than me the talking about is, uh, and I think you, you, you oxygenate and 06:36 therefore we, we allow loss of the organic matter through oxygenation, I think is what happens. But you help me out. You're the one 06:44 that's smarter about this than me. Yeah. We're, I mean, you're gonna break it up so it's got more surface area exposed and it can degenerate. 06:50 The light's gonna burn it up, the heat's gonna burn it up. The loss of moisture's gonna burn it up and oxidize. 06:56 I mean, all these processes are working together to destroy different aspects of it. And if you, till year after year 07:02 after year, you will see your organic matter go down unless you are doing some pretty impressive cover crop practices, I would argue. Okay, 07:10 So we asked the question, is tillage uh, necessary for, uh, to prevent nutrient stratification? We obviously are, you're coming out from the Absolutely. 07:18 It's not necessary. So let's go to the first off, the example that we used that got me interested in starting in December of 2023 when, 07:27 you know, the know all dumb ass on social media. 'cause we know they're out there, right? All you gotta do is log onto Twitter or Facebook 07:33 and for very much longer or any other, and there's gonna be somebody that ridicules you because they're know-it-all d*****s. 07:38 They've done everything. They're gen. If you went and saw their farming operation, you might beg to beg to quibble with that. 07:43 But by all, once they get behind their keyboard or their cell phone, they're a genius. So anyway, said that, that throwing 07:49 that out there does no good if is not incorporated. The first thing, when I proposed this topic for this podcast with your old man and you, he said, well, if that was, if 07:59 that was the case, we would stop doing it. We've been, we've been doing this for enough years that we clearly are using plant food broadcast over the top 08:08 after harvest for a, for a means of natural fertility bump. If it weren't working, we would stop. 08:15 We've been doing it for five years. So answer it just from the very be that that speaks for itself. 08:21 Yeah. I mean, 100% it would acquit. And then I, I'll tell you something else about plowing is that you're just gonna stratify it in a different place. 08:29 Um, it's been, there's been a lot of research that you're effectively incorporating only 50% of your plow depth. 08:35 So I mean, even if you're plowing pretty deep, you're only gonna end up in the three to five inch range anyway. 08:40 You're not really gonna get far below that seed. And it's, it's not gonna be a solution for you. I, you know, talking about this, I started 08:49 to look into the research on it, and I found a study by Dr. Ray Wheel from the University of of Maryland and Dr. 08:56 John Grove from the University of Kentucky. And they looked at two soils here. They looked at one that was plowed 09:01 to fix the stratification, and they looked at a no-till soil that did have some pretty severe stratification. 09:07 And what they found was the uptake in the no-till was in the no-till field was 130% better than the tilled field, 09:16 despite the stratification, because it was able to deliver that nutrition so much better to the plant roots. 09:23 I want you to say just the part again. Okay. Credentials are real. They're from two university agronomic research studies, 09:30 but the number, again, was on uptake. The no-till field had 130, excuse me, the no-till field had 130% better nutrient uptake than the 09:42 tilled field, despite stratification was the conclusion of this study. Okay. And I thought the other meaning even if there was 09:49 stratification meaning at the top, like in the top two inches. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. The three inches, 09:53 because that's the argument against no-till, is that you're gonna have all those resources in the top two to three inches, but your roots 09:57 are down seven or eight inches. You said another thing though, you said tillage might fix, might, might remove nutra might get nutrients from the top 10:06 two inches down, but then it just stratifies those nutrients at your plow layer. 10:12 6, 7, 8 inches is Actually half of the plow layer. It, it doesn't effectively get it all the way down the shank. 10:18 It's about halfway. So it's really pretty commonly three to five inch, you're stratifying right in the seed zone, 10:24 but you're still above the main rooting zone anyway. And like I said, now you don't have the structure and organic matter and root channels 10:31 to move it down into that root zone anyway. So you've created a bigger problem for yourself, Rick. I love it. All right. I wanna hear about then ways 10:38 to prevent nutrient stratification besides tillage and what, uh, and what, what methods you think are gonna be employing 10:45 and deploying there at Land and Cattle. Uh, dear listener, I wanna talk to you about Nature's Nature's. 10:50 One of our business partners here at Extreme Ag Nature's is focused on providing you with the tools you need 10:54 to succeed on your farming operation. You hear the guys a lot talk about, uh, spoon feeding and about putting nutrients out 11:00 to feed the plant at critical times of influence. All the guys have talked about this. We've done webinars about it, 11:05 and we we're really big about this. Rather than just wasting fertility, eventually there's gonna be environmental regulation 11:11 that actually makes you track log, document your fertilizer inputs. Trust me, it's coming. So why don't you get ahead of 11:17 that curve and listen to cutting the curve. And while you can do that, is putting out fertility that feeds the plant and does not end up in a water stream 11:26 in an environmental, uh, disaster. You can do that with products like Nature's products powered by Bio K. 11:31 You can target specific periods of influence throughout the growing season and put it the exactly where you want 11:36 through precision placement. You can mitigate your stress, you can enhance your crop yield, 11:40 and you can boost your farm's ROI, which is the most important thing, so that your farmers is not only around for your generation, 11:45 it prospers to live on for the next generation. All right, I'm speaking to the next generation of Garrett, land and cattle. 11:50 I think he's the sixth generation, uh, since 1881 there in Crawford County, Iowa. We're talking to Verne Garrett, sometimes known as Verne, 11:58 usually known as Vern. His real name is Connor. But either way, what's the deal then if you say, all right, I want 12:04 to remain a reduced to no till, no till to reduce till, and there is a reality that some nutrients are hung up in that top. 12:12 So there is some stratification where there's a lot of nutrients hung in that top two inches. What do I do to make sure that they move up 12:18 and down the soil profile minus tillage? So the idea I've heard about that most excites me is, um, we're, well, we're already running cover cropping 12:30 and uh, that's going to concentrate some sugars and roots in those soil in those, excuse me, in the roots. The, the thing that's interesting, 12:39 and I I'd like to know more about this, is the method by which you've kill the cover crop, how you're terminating it. 12:45 I've heard about using heavy boron solutions to ke terminate your cover crop with the killing it with boron. 12:52 And what that does is it causes the plant to drive all the sugar into the roots. And so then you've, you've moved all your fertility down 12:59 as you kill the cover crop. That's one way, you know, that cover crop's gonna scavenge a lot of that fertility and that, I mean, that's what we, you would really look 13:07 to do is to move it down into the rooting zone when you terminate it. I've heard of some different blends 13:12 and some different things that can be used there. And, uh, I I, I'm doing more research on it. I think that's a really interesting, 13:18 So how we kill or terminate cover crop now that assumes that you use cover crops. No tilt does not mean cover crop. 13:23 You could actually be a no tiller and not a cover cropper, but, uh, there's only like 10% of the acres I think 13:29 that I read that get used, get cover crops on 'em. So assuming that you don't cover crop, but you do wanna reduce tillage 13:35 'cause cover crops are just too crazy for you, we have listeners that say, I'm, I'm gonna start listening to my man Vern. 13:39 I'm gonna reduce tillage, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to start doing the cover crop thing. Right? 13:44 Right. But if you are already no till and you are looking to till to reduce your stratification, I'd rather you go the cover crop route. Um, other ways 13:52 You could 'cause cover because a secondary crop that you terminate and don't harvest tends to move nutrients pretty vastly. 14:00 I mean, they talked about radishes like a decade or so ago that they were breaking up compaction, but they also, uh, moved had the, the ability to, 14:08 to change soil profile movement of nutrients. Right, Right, right. Those bigger tap root crops really are, I mean, 14:15 really good for that. And you know, just anything you get out there, it's gonna pick up that, that nutrient 14:20 and not let it erode away or anything. And then when you're gonna kill it in the next spring, now you've got extra rooting channels, you've got extra 14:28 organic matter over the long term and you've got better. You, you're building a better soil that's gonna move 14:33 that nutrition better over time. Understood. Okay then if I don't have cover crops and I don't want to till, or it's the wrong time 14:41 of the season, I think I have a stratification problem. Do I have options? Uh, I mean, yeah, there's tons of solutions. 14:49 You can get creative with things. Uh, one of the things I've heard a lot of people talk about is going to a strip till rig 14:55 and banding that fertility. I think that's a really interesting solution if you're willing to go through that. 15:00 We don't do a lot of that here. It's a logistical challenge as well as with our hills. It's tough to keep it on the row, 15:07 but if you're interested in that, I think that's definitely one solution, actually putting that fertility gap further down in the profile 15:13 below the, below the seed. Bern, one of the things we talk about in everything, business, life and agriculture is sometimes the best, uh, 15:21 solution is prevention. Is there, are there, are there ways to prevent nutrient stratification? 15:29 And I'm thinking you're probably gonna tell me prevention of compaction, for instance, will allow a more porous, 15:37 open soil should move nutrients more. I think that's probably one of your answers. But you tell me about prevention. 15:44 Yeah, I would say you, you know what I mean, the guy in your comments is, right, your nutrients are gonna stratify more in a no-till system. 15:53 What I'm trying to tell you is that that's not, Why did you have to do that? I hated the guy. I don't even know who he is, 15:59 but I'm such a hothead when somebody spouts off to me on social media, I automatically hate them. I I don't pull this thing up. 16:07 Oh, social media's a great place for discourse. If I wanted discourse, I'd go to, you know, I'd go back to high school gym class right. 16:14 To fight people because, you know, they tried to say they're a better athlete than me. I don't want discourse on social media. 16:19 I, but I'm not afraid of it. So if you spout off to me, I just assumed that I hate you. All right. Now you wouldn and said he was right. 16:25 Well, I, I don't remember the exact quote that you used, but I will say he's correct 16:30 that nutrients are gonna stratify more in the no-till system. What I'm trying to argue is that that's not a concern. 16:37 If you, if you have the goal of building a healthy soil, that you absolutely shouldn't be concerned about 16:42 that nutrient stratification and go out and try to fix it with the plow. Like you just said, prevention is the 16:47 best, best thing we can do. Breaking up compaction, I mean, that's a huge thing for building a healthier soil. 16:53 Build a more biologically active, healthier soil with proper structure, proper organic matter. And that nutrient stratification is not gonna be a 17:01 problem. Go to sleep at night And nowhere. You always laugh. I talk when I say that I hate people. 17:06 You laugh like you think I'm kidding, but I'm serious. No, I believe you. I I believe you. All right. Answer me this. 17:15 Actually, what he said was that it didn't do any good if you didn't incorporate. That's not true. And that's where I, I've always quibbled 17:21 because again, I was a dairy farm kid, and you're talking clear back 40 years ago, you would get told that, 17:26 that if you didn't incorporate the manure in that you, you were getting no value from it. It didn't make sense to me as a FFA soil judger. 17:34 It doesn't make sense to me. Now, today, working in ag, talking to guys like you, um, is there a case be made that, um, 17:43 you're putting it maybe more where it needs to be? Maybe is there a case be made? For instance, if you pumped in liquid hog 17:49 or dairy manure, let's say, and you put it at that seven eight inch layer level, uh, you could make the case that the moisture is going to, uh, 17:57 get in there and do a little bit more good. Versus if it was blown on top or it's gonna evaporate. You could make the case that somehow it might be meeting 18:03 with bacteria that can break it down. I could almost buy some of that. Mm-Hmm. But I also soil's a living and breathing thing. 18:14 And it, it, it naturally, it naturally, as you talked about from the prairie soils that we, that you described moves nutrients up and down 18:23 or we wouldn't have had those prairie grasses 300 years ago when the pioneers started walking across the Illinois. 18:29 Right. Right. There's pros and cons to each of it. And I'm gonna tell you, the list of cons is way more longer when it comes to tilling it. 18:36 And there's way better solutions. Uh, another thing I think, you know, that we use is netafim subsurface drip irrigation. 18:45 When we've got that, we can deliver the fertility down below too. So, I mean, there's just all kinds 18:49 of different ways you can think around this before you go get the mold bore plow out. There you go. So if you had a subsurface drip irrigation 18:56 system, obviously you can put nutrients down in the 12 to 14 inch layer, then they're working their way up or being pulled up by the roots, 19:04 and then the stuff you're putting on top is, is so then you end up, you're meeting in the middle kind of thing. 19:08 Right. What about, um, the actual degradation of the, of the stuff, like I was just saying like that, like the, the guy that commented on the post that I decided I hate, 19:18 um, he says that you're wasting, you're wasting the nutrient. Is there such a thing as a waste 19:24 of nutrient if I put plant food or manure or whatever it is out on top of the soil without plowing it in, 19:31 without incorporating it, is it wasted? I, I'm kind of, of the opinion that nutrients can neither be wasted, uh, you know, 19:37 can be created nor destroyed. Sort like matter, but maybe I'm wrong. Um, you know, you in a hot dry time, you might lose some 19:46 of that nitrogen to the air. Okay. But the rest of it, I, I wouldn't see that as a problem. 19:51 And you know, we, we use anhydrous ammonia out here and so that, that's not our plant food's not as huge for us for uh, nitrogen source, 20:01 but you know, it's always just looking to make that soil healthier and to incorporate those nutrients however we can. 20:08 But yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Then we're not gonna waste p and k that way unless there's an erosion situation. Yeah. 20:14 In which case it washes away and goes down to the, to the waterway and then, Which is again, a lot worse than a tilled soil. 20:21 Yeah. Right. Yeah. Erosion meaning it, the, the, the, the resources lost, meaning it in a plowed soil washes down the hill 20:30 to a creek, to a river. And yeah, you did lose the nutrient, but it wasn't because it, it was applied on top is 20:36 because it was gonna happen anyhow. And it's erosion is worse on tilled soils. What about the other angle that there used to be a big push 20:46 because for like manure, you were supposed to incorporate it to control odor. 20:52 So they're kind of fixed. Like they're, they're saying I'd like to blow it out over the top, it'd be easier, 20:58 but I have to per regulations 'cause there's a city or a subdivision right next to my stuff, I had to put it there. 21:04 Are they, are they fine or are they just gonna have to deal with the fact that they've got a whole bunch of nutrients 21:11 that are stratified in that, you know, six, six inch, five inch range that'll never get to the surface? Yeah, you know, every system's 21:20 different, every area's different. You gotta do what works for you. At the end of the day. I, I can't speak to that much. 21:25 It's pretty, pretty rural where I'm from. I, I can't give you all the answers. I'm dealing with people I like to talk about crop. 21:31 Is nutrient stratification something that we didn't talk a lot about 20 years ago or 40 years ago? 21:37 Is it better understood now, um, because of, of the advanced testing? Is it better understood now just 21:44 because everything else, like, we're like, okay, wait a minute. Yeah, we've got stuff out there, 21:48 but it's not doing us any good. Is it, is it being fixed? I think we understand it better, 21:52 but is it being fixed? Yeah. Yeah. I think we're, I mean the research is better and better. We're, we're learning more and more about the issue. 21:59 And it's definitely being talked about more and more. And I'd say we're a lot farther on it than maybe when you were growing up on the dairy farm 22:05 and everybody said you had to plow that down. So we asked the question, is tillage necessary to prevent nutrients, stratification? 22:11 And Vern say overwhelmingly, no, no, no, no, and no. So your recommendation is the person that still believes that. 22:16 I, I think you're gonna say, why don't you trial it both ways And really then without bias, ask yourself. 22:23 'cause if you're tilling, you're spending money on diesel, you're wear and tear on your tractor 22:27 and your time is worth something. Not to mention, you could be in increasing or introducing an erosion problem that is unnecessary. 22:35 So you would think with those four negatives, you would at least consider doing a trial to find one positive. 22:41 Is that what your recommendation is? Yeah, 100%. What else you got for me to get me out the door On the nutrient stratification thing, 22:48 usually you save the smartest nugget of like one sentence brilliance till the very end. So what do you got for me? 22:57 Um, I, I use that up at the beginning 'cause he usually yell at me. I that, that my toe stuff line. I brought that out swinging. 23:03 So you, so you wouldn't get mad at me at the end. Alright, say it again. Say it again because I want you to close out with that. 23:07 'cause that's a brilliant statement. Um, going to tillage to fix your nutrient stratification is like cutting off your 23:15 toe because you stepped it. You've created a lot bigger prob bigger, longer lasting problems with your solution. 23:21 The name's Vern Garrett. He's got brilliant fun nuggets of wisdom just like that. The reason they call him Vern, because even 23:26 as a kid he was sort of like an old man and now you know that you hear his nuggets of wisdom. It's like my uncle used to say stuff like that. That's him. 23:33 Anyway, my name's Damian Mason. He's Vern, he's kind of Vern Garrett. And if you want to hear more great stuff 23:38 like this, share this round. Extreme mag.farm. Hundreds of videos, hundreds and hundreds of podcasts that I've created just like this. 23:45 Plus hundreds and hundreds of videos that we've shot in field. I've been to their farm multiple times. 23:48 We've shot videos out there, educational stuff, agronomics economics practices, fertility, uh, utilization of livestock for soil enhancement. 23:58 We've covered it all. It's extreme. mag.farm. You wanna take your learning to the next level, become an extreme Mag member. 24:03 It's only $750 for a year. You get data and trial data and information at the end of the year that the others do not get. 24:12 You get a direct, uh, communications platform if you wanna go deeper on a subject with the extreme Ag guys 24:17 and also you get special offers from our business partners. That's right. Last two years, nature's has paid for the, 24:24 uh, extreme Ag members to go to Commodity Classic for free. So check it out. Till next time, 24:29 Mr. Garrett, thanks for being here. Thanks you for having me, Damien. You're awesome. Nutrient stratification, no tillage is not necessarily 24:35 necessary to fix your stratification problems. Check this out. Share it with somebody that can benefit from it. 24:41 Till next time, thanks for being here. That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve. Make sure to check out Extreme ag.farm 24:48 for more great content to help you squeeze more profit out of your farming operation. 24:53 Cutting the curve is brought to you by Simon Innovations. Don't let your sprayers limitations hold you back. 24:58 Visit simon innovations.com and upgrade your sprayer's capabilities now.