Thinking Outside the Strip – One-Pass Manure Incorporation and Seedbed Prep with Strip Till

Ken Hartemink is a hog and cash crop producer just outside St. Thomas, Ontario. Ken wanted to shift away from moldboard plowing his mostly clay-loam ground and move towards strip till for corn production. Given he was already broadcasting manure with a tanker pass after harvest, he decided to mount a strip tiller to his manure tanker to simultaneously inject manure and prep a seedbed for next year’s corn crop.

 

 

In 2019, Ken started with his existing 7,000 gallon Nuhn manure tanker, and after attending some strip till demos, purchased a 6-row Kuhn Gladiator strip tiller. For mounting the bar on the tanker, a 3-pt quick hitch was purchased and with assistance from Nuhn was mounted to a traditional manure injector lift mounted to the rear of the tanker (Fig. 1). Ken fabricated manure injection outlets from 3” tube which mount to the rear of the Gladiator shanks using the existing dry fertilizer tube mounts. He also mentions “because it is impossible to watch the strip tiller behind the manure tanker, I mounted a camera on the strip tiller to watch for residue plugging or other issues from the cab”. Ken took advantage of environmental cost share programs for both the strip tiller and injector lift hitch.