February 10, 2020
Growing no-till corn in the heavy clay soils of Vermont’s Champlain Valley isn’t easy. A cold, wet spring can delay planting and bog down equipment in sticky mud.
But Jon Lucas, who milks 280 head in Orwell, Vt., has kept at it. You need persistence and an understanding of your soils to succeed, he says. “I think you can grow just as good a corn crop as you can with conventional tillage.”
No-till will save him money and free up his time, something this first-generation farmer doesn’t have much of.
“I’m a one-man show,” Lucas says. “I came into it with a bunch of loans and a pickup, and I’ve tried not to invest in a lot of equipment.
“I can’t spend 16 hours a day working in the field. And [with no-till] I’m not waiting around for the custom guy; I’m just waiting for the field to get ready. For me, it saves a lot of labor because I’m not doing all those tillage passes.”
It’s also improving compaction-prone fields.
Bad spring leads to changes
Lucas started with 150 head on the farm in 2016, renting to buy after farming for eight years in nearby Starksboro, Vt. Between pasture and cropland, he works 900 tillable acres.
His typical rotation is two years of corn and five years of hay. His first crop season he custom-planted most of his corn no-till, although some was conventionally tilled, too. It was a miserable year to get corn in the ground, and it ended up with little growth or population.
“It was pretty obvious right away — the ground has to be dry. If it’s too wet, you end up with big bricks,” he says. “The same with no-till. It has to be dry, but a lot of times it’s easier because only the top 2 inches need to be dry. Whereas with tillage, you need a couple more days for it to dry down farther. You have to know how to read your soil.”
That year he punted. During a three-day window of dry July weather, he reduce-tilled and broadcast sorghum, which gave him two cuttings. “But it doesn’t have the same energy as corn, although if it’s cut early, it’s highly digestible,” he says. “Now, it’s a Plan B.”
Last year’s conditions were the same, with cold, wet soil, and low corn population.
WATER QUALITY FOCUS: Jon Lucas’ fields drain into nearby Lake Champlain, which is ground zero for water-quality initiatives in Vermont. As a result, Lucas has gotten several grants and technical assistance from the state.
“I had one field that I thought was excellent, but it rained right after seeding and drowned the crop,” he says. “These weather events are crazy these days; they can drown the crop right off.”
But Lucas replanted the drowned fields and ended up with a corn crop that was excellent in quality and quantity. The past two years he’s averaged yields of 15 tons an acre, and more on better fields.
Lucas watches how his no-till planter works in dry and wet years, then adapts it. It also helps to find corn varieties that put on a good ear.