No-till sweet corn can work year round, eVGN April 2015
Andrew Frankenfield is a big advocate for using a no-till sweet corn approach throughout the season.
The Penn State University Extension educator touted the successes of using the strategy at the 2015 Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Convention in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Frankenfield, owner of Frankenfield Farm Market in southeast Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County, grows between 15 and 20 acres of sweet corn and 3 to 4 acres of pumpkins – all no-till. He raises the other vegetables conventionally with raised beds, biodegradable plastic and drip tape.
“The primary market for all of my produce is for our retail farm market,” he said. “Excess corn and pumpkins are sometimes wholesaled to nearby farm markets. I’ve been growing and selling sweet corn for 20 years. In 2002, we expanded the operation from our seasonal farm wagon by the roadside to a permanent building at the farm. It also was in 2002 we purchased a used JD 7000 corn planter, converted to no-till and started using it to no-till corn, soybeans, sweet corn and pumpkins
“The first few years I did some tillage, especially for early sweet corn. I didn’t like losing the soil health benefits of continuous no-till and cover crops just so I could plant early sweet corn. As I built up my confidence and the soil structure improved, I began no-tilling all of my sweet corn.
“I mainly do not till for the environmental benefits, soil erosion benefits and soil health benefits,” Frankenfield said. “We’ve been raising field crops for years with tillage. I didn’t feel it was necessary to work that ground and destroy those soil health benefits. We started out with early sweet corn planted in early April, and had success. We’ve continued to work with that over the years.
“I’ve been growing no-till sweet corn for about 15 years, continuous for the last eight years or so,” he said. “I keep sticking with it. Cover crops are a key component to that, and planting them as soon as that sweet corn crop is over is, as I see it, providing value to get as much growing as you can get out of that crop.
“Some cover crops I will harvest, such as rye for straw, or we’ll burn the annual rye grass and crimson clover down as it’s close to maturity to get some nitrogen out of the clover and provide mulch for the corn the next crop,” he said.
No-till requires a change of a grower’s mindset, Frankenfield said.
“You don’t need to have a field that is moldboard-plowed, disked and culti-mulched to plant a sweet corn crop,” he said. “I would argue my no-till fields do as well or better than those that are tilled in my area. If you are not going to do continuous no-till, I feel you might as well just keep tilling. The real benefits of no-till take a few years to be visible.”
No-till sweet corn is much more than not plowing to prepare the seedbed, Frankenfield said.
“Cover crops are a key component of the system. I only have the ability to irrigate certain fields, so three out of four years a field will likely be in sweet corn. As soon as we finish picking a field it is either mowed down or green chopped to feed our beef cows. Then we burn down with glyphosate and plant a cover crop within a week, sometimes the same day.”
“The beauty of no-till planting is you don’t need to work the soil prior to planting,” he said. “If it looks like it is going to rain later in the day and I was going to plant the next day anyway, I will go out and plant the field. Getting back into the field to spray before the corn emerges is easier, too, after the rain using no-till. I will also spray the residual herbicides ahead of planting, especially in June or July when I am planting more frequently, typically over four or five days.”
Frankenfield said planting into soil that has residue cover is good – especially in dry periods because there is more moisture under the mulch. Almost always, he said, there will be enough soil moisture to germinate planting.
“Uneven emergence or delayed emergence due to dry soil conditions will delay the maturity of our planting, causing headaches at harvest time,” he said. “There is a balance, however. Too much residue – especially on my soil types – will prevent the soil from drying at all. This residue also is beneficial for erosion control and slows evaporation losses.”