Francisco Arriaga 0:00
There we go. Now I can hear you better.

Will Fulwider 0:02
Perfect. Awesome. Yeah, no, that’s

Francisco Arriaga 0:03
Oh, that’s tons better.

Will Fulwider 0:07
You’re like wait now Will’s voice sounds way better.

Francisco Arriaga 0:10
Yeah, he sounds you sound more handsome now.

Will Fulwider 0:13
I sound like I belong on the radio.

Francisco Arriaga 0:15
Ooh, welcome to soil FM.

Will Fulwider 0:26
Welcome to Field Notes from UW Madison Extension. I’m Will Fulwider, and I’m joined by my co host Michael Geissinger. We bring farmers, experts, and agronomisst to the table to talk about research based approaches to the issues facing agriculture in Wisconsin. Today we are talking to both an extension specialist and a farmer about strip tillage. First we’re joined by Dr. Francisco Arriaga. Dr. Arriaga is an associate professor and soil science extension specialist at UW Madison, who specializes in soil physics and soil management. Dr. Arriaga, thanks for coming on today. Can you take a minute to introduce yourself and share what your research and extension work focuses on?

Francisco Arriaga 1:04
Hi, well, thank you for having me. Pretty excited to be talking about soil and soil management, especially specifically tillage. So my my program like you said, my training is in soil physics, I work in soil management. So I like to say that the work that I do is to support the development of agricultural management practices, in particular things that affect soil physical properties to improve soil health, water quality and sustainability. My, I call my lab the sustainable soil management lab. In, I know the word sustainability, sometimes it’s a little loaded, but the way I see it is that the sustainability we need to be looking in both at the economic side of things for the farming operation, which is a business, but also of the functioning of the soil where that’s where soil comes in, and also the environment at large. Most of the work I do obviously, I use it for for scientific presentations and the like, but also, most of if not all of my research is geared towards the output of outreach and extension activities.

Will Fulwider 2:13
Great. Now we’re talking about strip tillage today. But when we hear about conservation tillage no till tends to dominate the conversation. It’s what a lot of farmers like to talk about the soil health acolytes, when they’re going around the country talking, they’re mostly talking about that. But could you give us a little bit of an intro into strip tillage, as you know, some farmers are out there doing it. For some people, it fits their systems. And, you know, what are kind of the advantages and disadvantages of it compared to other types of conventional or conservation tillage?

Francisco Arriaga 2:42
Yeah, absolutely. And I think two part part of the scenario things that we need to keep in mind is that there’s no one size fits all right. Sometimes even within an operation, different fields need to be managed differently. And so when we talk about conservation tillage, you’re right, I think, no till, it’s what dominates the conversation, just because it’s sort of to me, it’s, it’s the one end or one end of the range of the spectrum, where you’re doing very little disturbance, ideally, the only disturbance you’re doing it’s, it’s with either applying fertilizers or manure, and when you’re planting seeding, you know, you’re putting that seed into the soil. And with strip till, you know, you’re you’re doing some further manipulation beyond that, right, you’re, you’re trying to prepare the seed bed, right, where the, where the seed is gonna go right in the row. And so you’re trying to limit the disturbance you’re doing across the field. One way that I like to think about strip till is that it sort of kind of the best of both worlds in that you have that strip where you’re doing the tillage, you’re trying to prepare a seed bed and kind of address certain issues there–and that’s, again, where you’re going to be putting your planter in those rows–but then in between the roles you sort of have then a situation where it’s like no till so so you’re you’re sort of gaining benefits from from both, especially in our climate up here in the Midwest, where we can benefit a little bit sometimes in depending on the conditions in the fields and so on and so forth in the year from a little bit of tillage, right. I think the when we talk about conservation tillage, the one thing I like to talk about to contrast it is the conventional. It’s to try to reduce and not do excessive tillage. What is excessive though, that’s where it gets tricky, right? How do we find that? But but that’s sort of where that range I guess a spectrum I guess, if you will, of tillage practices come in.

Will Fulwider 4:40
And you were kind of talking about like, sometimes the field can benefit from something like strip tillage. And can you drill down on that a little bit like what specific situations call for it rather than others?

Francisco Arriaga 4:52
Yeah, so I think strip till could be beneficial in let’s say, scenario that you have, perhaps a lot of residue, and so you want to, like I mentioned, in our climate, we typically have cool springs, so getting some of that residue from the row where you’re gonna be putting your seed will expose some of that soil, which was going to be darker than the residue, and will be exposed and or be receiving sunlight, so we’ll be getting this solar radiation will will help that soil in that area to warm up a little bit faster. So you might get better conditions in that case. So that’s that’s one scenario, for example, where it could be beneficial when you have high residue, and you want to have that soil warm up a little bit in that strip. Having said that, no till sometimes it’s not too bad on you know, we have done a lot of research looking at no till. And yeah, the soil tends to be a little bit cooler early on, but then it catches up fairly fast. So so but if that’s a concern, right, that temperature, I think strip till, that’s a good scenario. The other one too, if you have concerns about maybe some minor compaction, so compaction, doing that, that strip tillage that could alleviate and they depends also how you have the strip drill rig set up, some of them will have some kind of shallow shank that you can run in the ground and do that. During my days with the USDA Agricultural Research Service down in the southeast that’s actually how we did strip tillage because those soils actually have very low organic matter, you know, if you had, if you had half a percent organic matter on some of those soils, you were rocking it, you know, 1% to half a percent. But those soils tended to reconsolidate on their own, just because of their condition the top soil we had. And so strip till it actually we did it with a with a kind of a sub soiler shank to address that. So you can go configure strip till to kind of suit your needs. You know, this is very specific to the southeast that that one mentioned with a with a deep ripper type shank. But but you can configure it to sort of address your needs. And that’s one thing I like about this strip till is that it gives you still some flexibility.

Will Fulwider 6:59
Right. And speaking of flexibility, you know, when we talk about timing, you know, obviously timing tillage is really important. And there are kind of some people that do strip stripping in the fall, and in the spring and some people that only do in the spring, and I kind of think what’s like, what’s your thoughts on that? When is the best time to do it, you know, obviously, in the spring, it’s wet more often. And so it’s maybe you don’t have as good of an opportunity to get in there early in order to set up the strips or then planting because it’s another pass you have to make in the spring. But I’m just curious about your thoughts on that.

Francisco Arriaga 7:36
Yeah, so that’s, I guess, what was the sort of one of the debates right, timing, when to when to do tillage operation? Um, so again, it will, it’ll vary, I guess it depends. So the biggest issue, I guess, or the biggest hindrance, I guess, that I’ve heard, you know, concern that people have, it’s, it’s the availability of the time, right, when can I get into the field, I have more time in the fall, perhaps than in the spring. So I’d rather do it in the fall. And I think that probably is a big factor when people are trying to figure out when to do a particular tillage operation, doesn’t matter, not just strip tillage. In this specific case of strip tillage, and kind of looking at the benefits, I guess, the crop benefits to the soil, you know, the environment and all those kind of things, probably doing a spring is a little bit better in that you were you can still get erosion, you know, depending on the slope of your field and the configuration, how you running the strip till rig, you know, ideally, you’re running perpendicular to the slope, all those type of things. But that can affect, you can still get some erosion out of those strips, it’s gonna be less than if you were doing a full width tillage, but you still get good erosion on those type of concerns. So doing that in the spring would actually minimize that risk in that concern. But at the same time, you know, depending on your soil condition, if you do it in the fall, maybe the way that that strip is left, the aggregates, the soil chunks, I guess, if you will, are are not ideal for planting. And so maybe doing this in the fall, that gives it some time for that soil to mellow and have a better condition then in the spring when you go to plant. So it’ll vary because of the conditions, but some of the things that to consider are these that I just mentioned.

Will Fulwider 9:36
Yeah, and that’ll vary with your soil type as well. Right?

Francisco Arriaga 9:39
Soil type, the year, moisture, you know, what is the previous crop, those those those type of things. You know, like, after soybeans, I will say if you can wait to the spring do it after the spring that residue this and it’s not substantial compared to let’s say corn, right? So.

Will Fulwider 9:58
So we’re talking about over erosion talking about aggregation. And so that gets me thinking of soil health. And, you know, what are all the folks that are all about soil health, You know, preach the no till kind of the word of no till so to speak. And I’m curious, like, how does strip tillage fit within this within kind of soil health? And what are the implications for strip tillage on soil health?

Francisco Arriaga 10:25
Yeah. So so I think strip till it, like I said, it kind of gives you a little bit of good things from both worlds of full width, tillage and also the no till. So I think as far as soil health, it’s, it’s a good system for soil health, right, you have the space between the rows, if you’re planning on on on 30 inch spacings, you might have about 20 inches in between that it’s essentially a no till scenario in your field, and then you have these other, you know, 10 inches within that row, that it’s tilled, you’re kind of creating a little bit better conditions, you’re maybe injecting or trying to incorporate some fertilizer. I haven’t seen these but I’m sure somebody has done this, doing sort of strip till, at the same time they’re applying manure or sort of like an injection type, strip till manure injection kind of combo, I think that would be kind of kind of a good setup to do. That’s something we cannot dismiss here in the state right, in Wisconsin, we have a lot of manure, and that’s, you know, we need to manage that proper way. So, injecting that into the ground is the best way. So, as far as soil healthification, I think it’s good for the soil, right, it’s gonna be certainly better than fukll width tillage, it’s gonna be better than your sizzle fit, chisel plow, disk, even even better than vertical tillage. In that regards, because you’re disturbing less of the soil, and so it’s going to promote aggregation. The way I like to think about soil health and aggregation, to me goes hand in hand. So the things that you can do to promote aggregation your soil are going to help your soil health, because aggregates the spacing between aggregates, and the space between the soil particles. That’s where those microbes, the fungi that bacteria lives, right? They live in aquatic environments, and that’s where the water is held, that’s where the water it’s retained in the bigger spaces, the bigger pores that are between the aggregates, that’s also then what’s going to help infiltration, recharge the profile, reduce runoff, reduce erosion. So I think to me, you sort of getting the best of both worlds with with the strip tillage and as far as soil health, you still will see great benefits compared to like full width tillage.

Will Fulwider 12:43
Right. Yeah, that makes sense. And since Michael is currently on a train and can’t ask his question about nutrient management, you know, I’m here to ask it for him. And as you were talking about the opportunity for incorporating manure into the strips, and are there kind of does this strip tillage present you with, you know, to expound upon that, more opportunities for incorporating that fertilizer, there are different ways to place it than you would have maybe in a no till system.

Francisco Arriaga 13:12
Yeah, so certainly you have an opportunity to do band it but inject, you know, in a band into the soil and gives you some flexibility compared to no till scenario where we would just be there broadcast or just, you know, you’re you’re basically relying then on the water, rainfall or irrigation by water to soak in the whatever fertilizer or other material you’re applying. And so with a with a strip till sort of gives you another nother another way of doing this and I’ve seen some setups where the strip, they’ll they might have a little drop down tube behind right behind they might have a shank or something right behind it, to place whatever fertilizer or whatever material they’re trying to put into the ground. I haven’t seen much work I guess with liming in strip tilling, but you know, it should help a little bit to incorporate into the soil. Relative to to to no till. It will vary. And like I said, the setups can be quite different. But the it does certainly give you another opportunity and other another tool in the toolbox to do manage your fertility.

Will Fulwider 14:23
Right and one more here at the end of May. And I look at the forecast and there’s not no rain for the next 10 some days or more, you know, not getting that rain for that granular fertilizer, that’s not really going to do a lot for your crops there if it if it can’t be, like you said activated or you know, pushed down into the soil through that water. So, you know, something like this gives you more flexibility, as you mentioned.

Francisco Arriaga 14:48
All right, correct, and if you applied in the fall, and you just broadcast and leave it on the surface, right and you have potentially a higher risk of losing it and runoff during the winter months, right. So with this you get into soil and that risk will go down.

Will Fulwider 15:04
Totally, cool. Well, I mean, that’s kind of all the questions that we had for you, Francisco. Do you have anything you want to add here? Kind of at the end?

Francisco Arriaga 15:15
No, I guess to wrap up again, like I said, I think strip till it’s sort of an option that is very useful for for Wisconsin, I think it’s very viable. We have work looking at this mainly on corn, for grain, because we’re looking at residue issues in nitrogen, application rates and strip till actually came as a very, very strong competitor, as far as the cost, and the how the corn yield response behaved. And so I think that’s something that we probably should do a better job at advocating and kind of keep researching and promote as a system.

Will Fulwider 15:58
Yeah, because it does, it’s definitely not something that feels like it’s at the forefront of conversations. It’s kind of like, oh, you know, there’s that farm that strip tills over there, which, I mean, if it’s an opera, if it’s like you said, a tool in the toolbox, we need to be talking about it, especially if folks are looking for a different way to move away from conventional tillage, but you know, aren’t fully ready to jump you know, towo feet into the, to the huge pond that is no till and all the, you know, consequences and difficulties that you have with changing that system. So.

Francisco Arriaga 16:28
Absolutely, yeah. And that’s a big commitment, right, like going from conventional tillage full with tillage to then let’s say, you’re telling me now I cannot run a piece of tillage equipment there, and I’m not comfortable with that. Right. So it’s a good, it’s a good kind of at least step forward, but you stop at that step. I think you’re doing great.

Will Fulwider 16:47
Now, well, great. Well, Dr. Arriaga, Francisco. Thanks for joining us.

Francisco Arriaga 16:52
Well, thank you for having me.

Will Fulwider 17:05
Next, we’ll hear from farmer Sam Johnson, as he talks about what strip tillage is like out in the fields.

Sam Johnson 17:25
We started strip tilling in 2005.

Michael Geissinger 17:29
Sam is a row crop farmer near River Falls, Wisconsin and is active with the South Kinnikinnick Watershed Council.

Sam Johnson 17:36
We rotate between beans and corn and where we don’t strip till we plant oats and some bean fields. So then obviously, we dig that a little bit. But now we just found that with the erosion and stuff we can get through. Let’s see, we don’t want to erode as much with a strip tilling as when we plowed everything you can get by with less waterways in your field.

Will Fulwider 18:10
And kind of like what was that decision process? Like? Were you just seeing that you had a lot of erosion on your fields after kind of doing more like heavy plowing tillage, and you’re like, okay, we need to make a change here to, you know, reduce that erosion? Or were you thinking, okay, you know, this is something new, we might as well try it.

Sam Johnson 18:29
A little bit of both. I think there’s, you know, you go by fence lines that have been there for years and years, and the fields are, you know, foot or more lower than the fence lines, and so something had to change. And it was a new thing. And my dad thought it would be a good idea. So there we go, we start trying it. And, you know, the neighbors are like, what the heck are you doing, but as far as yield wise, it’s very similar to everybody else. And the less passes across the field, the better as well, at least a year. So.

Will Fulwider 19:01
Now, where did you end up getting the equipment and kind of like, what was the process of choosing the the implement that you ended up getting?

Sam Johnson 19:11
Well, I think at the time, I mean, it was, let’s see, 18 years ago, there wasn’t many to choose from. We ended up getting a DMI, one from implement dealer just crossed the border in Minnesota. And we actually didn’t have a big enough tractor to even pull it. So we borrowed a neighbor’s and for the first year, and then we ended up buying a new tractor or not a new one but a new one to us and went from there.

Will Fulwider 19:43
Did you see a pretty immediate difference in that first year? Or was it you know, a couple years down the road that you started kind of seeing a little bit of change in, you know, either erosion or you know, your yield stabilizing to what they were?

Sam Johnson 19:56
I think, you know, the first year I actually wasn’t full time farming them at that time yet. The first year it was I, we didn’t do it all strip till. But as it progressed, it just it, you know, it’s so much faster because you do one pass and you can plant. And it was like, you know, time is money, right? I mean, so you got to do as much as you can, as quick as you can. The yield wise, we never really saw that big of a difference ever. I mean, I’m sure there is but you know, you’re saving time and fuel and everything else. But the less passes you go. So we just continued with it.

Will Fulwider 20:45
And do you feel like have you ever had to modify it or change it over the years? You had mentioned earlier in our conversation that you had gotten GPS at some point?

Sam Johnson 20:54
Well, yeah, so we didn’t have GPS for the first, I don’t know, five, six years. And then I was doing the spraying. And I was noticing like when you’d go around the corner, or if you’d get off the row a little bit, you know, the beans or corn or whatever it was was probably six inches shorter than the stuff that was actually in the row. We just discussed that it would be beneficial to get GPS to your make sure you stay in the row, and it makes a huge difference.

Will Fulwider 21:30
Kind of like following up on that staying in the row idea. Are you all when you do your your row creation with the strip till are you choosing the same spot year after year? Are you kind of alternating between the areas that were stripped and those that weren’t?

Sam Johnson 21:44
You know, for compaction. We just we use the same lines. Like I mean, I know there’s fields on there from the first year that we did that we still use the same line. Okay. Same over and over.

Michael Geissinger 21:58
Would you say that’s pretty typical for people that are strip tilling?

Sam Johnson 22:01
I, you know, I don’t know, there’s people around us that do like no till, like they will no till their beans in between the corn rows. And then vice versa the next year. But there’s not honestly, there’s one other farmer a little north of us that I can think of that strip tells otherwise, nobody really does it.

Michael Geissinger 22:22
Yeah, same. It’s certainly not as widespread as some of the other ones. But it sounds like it’s working really well for you guys. You kind of touched on this earlier, but I’d like to talk about talking about it again here. And so do you guys tend to strip till in the fall or spring? And then could you elaborate on that? You know why one might be more preferable than the other?

Sam Johnson 22:45
Well, when we first started, we tried getting everything done in the fall. But as I said earlier in our conversation that before we got GPS, you couldn’t, you couldn’t really see the road very well. So we quit doing it in the fall. And in our cornfields for beans for the next year, this corn stalks were so tough to try to strip till through that we’d started using them, or waiting rather till the spring, so you could go through those corn stalks better. But now that we have GPS, we could for sure do the bean fields that’s going to be corn next year, in the fall, because it doesn’t matter, you know, you can just you don’t even need to steer anymore. So that I mean, it’s a time thing to it’s, it’d be nice to get some done in the fall. But depending on the weather, obviously, and how harvest goes if you have the time to hop in there and do it. But there’s also, I like to hunt too. So you know, there’s that too.

Michael Geissinger 23:44
You gotta you gotta balance it. Time is money, but it’s also hunting time. Right. Awesome. And what are some of the advantages or disadvantages that you that you’ve seen in your strip till system over no till or a conventional till system? It sounds like you guys used to do a lot of plowing?

Sam Johnson 24:07
Yeah, I mean, the big thing is the time there’s huge save, you know, you go like our neighbor’s a chisel plow and then they’ll in the spring or they’ll chisel plow in the fall and then they’ll have to dig it in the spring and then put fertilizer on it then go dig it again then plant it whereas we just go in and strip till it and plant and we’re done. So the time thing is huge.

Michael Geissinger 24:39
Does that tend to save you money on fuel especially compared to like a conventional implement or is that pretty common?

Sam Johnson 24:48
I guess it might be comparable. But the you know, the less passes is huge. You know you gotta go instead of three four times or whatever it may be. It’s once. I mean, we did some trials where we no tilled some and strip tilled some side by side in the same field and the no till was significantly, I think it was like five or six bushel, it was beans, I know that it was like five or six bushels or less per acre, you know, the, we didn’t do a whole acre, but side by side there, it was less. And we honestly haven’t conventional tilled for corn or beans in long time, at least 18 years. So I can’t really say conventional till anything bad or good about it. So.

Michael Geissinger 25:44
Sounds good. I did have a logistical question that I wanted to follow up on to when you guys are getting ready to strip till what kind of fields conditions are you usually watching out for. So you know, it’s time?

Sam Johnson 25:58
Well, we just do it, there’s these wheels on the back. And if they mud sticks to him, we just quit. Really, you can, it can be pretty damp out but it takes quite a bit of power to pull it through the field. Surprisingly, we only have a six row strip tiller, but we had a two wheel drive tractor on it when we first started and you could, you could sometimes you couldn’t make a hill. So we ended up getting a four wheel drive, which you can go through a lot. So and obviously it’s basically when it’s time to plant. It’s you can strip tail and we usually try to you can strip till faster than you can plant out. So we if it’s time to plant we’ll go strip till field and then they can start planting then you can keep strip till and stay ahead of the planter. One advantage of doing it in the fall, it does warm up a little quicker in the spring. But we figure if you get a day or two headstart, it’s good enough.

Will Fulwider 26:58
I have a kind of funky question. You’d mentioned earlier that, you know, the fence rows compared to where you’ve been tilling for you know, however many years that place has been farmed, you could see the difference. It was a foot deeper. I’m just curious now that you have GPS, and you’ve been, you know, going over the same rows, year after year, have you noticed some sort of differentiation between the rows being slightly lower than the kind of untilled medians more or less? Or is it just like look exactly the same at the end of the day?

Sam Johnson 27:34
You know, it’s it’s interesting, because you can go like from year to year. Because when you strip to like our machine and actually pulls the ground up, so it makes a little mound where the rows go. Okay, so it’s actually actually it’s if anything, I think the rows are a little higher. If anything, otherwise it’s and we don’t go year after year after year, you know, we do a rotation of oats and hay because we have cattle, horses. So it’s not like we’re doing the same fields over and over and over, you know, occasionally you know, every four or five years we’ll put a field to hay or even if it’s not, hay, we’ll dig it and plant oats because we do plant oats and then we’ll do a cover crop after oats if we’re not seeding a down for alfalfa.

Will Fulwider 28:22
Gotcha. And then that cover crop is Do you strip till the end of that that following year? Is that like a winter killed cover crop?

Sam Johnson 28:30
Yeah, so a lot of times what we’ve been doing lately is we’ll strip till it or no till it.

Will Fulwider 28:39
Okay. And is that? Is that like cereal rye cover crop? Or What are y’all planting?

Sam Johnson 28:45
Last last year? Well, we used to do radishes and stuff. But that got pretty expensive. So now last few last few years we’ve just done rye.

Will Fulwider 28:53
Yeah. And then you say you strip it and then you come back and burn it off. Kind of in between this strip till rows after planting or something?

Sam Johnson 29:03
Well, we’d usually try to burn off and then just strip till it planted. Gotcha. Last are both three years ago, we planted we got we didn’t get to it in time. And I know that the rye was three feet tall. And we planted corn right through it. And everyone thought we were crazy and went in there and sprayed it. And it was some of the best corn we had.

Will Fulwider 29:25
Really?

Sam Johnson 29:25
And you know, another advantage of strip tilling. When you leave all that residue on top of the ground, it holds a lot more moisture than if it’s worked.

Will Fulwider 29:34
Right. Yeah. So you’re holding moisture kind of in between the rows keeping some of that and then you’re, you know, getting that nice black earth exposed to the sun, warm it up, you know, nice and ready for planting. So kind of best of both worlds, so to speak.

Sam Johnson 29:47
Right and that’s one thing we did have to do to our strip tilling machine that came with coulters on the front but we took those off and bought some trash whips and put on and that helped a lot. It looks like there’s a little window of corn stocks a lot of times in between the rows but it grows through it.

Will Fulwider 30:07
Yeah. And then those medians, I guess that’s just what I’m going to call the area between the strips. Sure. Do you have when you say you’ve had, you know, you had three feet of rye, do you get pretty good weed suppression from that rye?

Sam Johnson 30:20
Yeah, you know, we went in there and sprayed it. And it was, I think that was one of the only years that we didn’t have to spray it twice. Because it just took, you know, it took that long for the rye to die down. And by the time that was the, you know, the corn was a couple feet tall. And you know, it’s just amazing, actually how it works. The canopy was almost there, so didn’t have to spray it again.

Will Fulwider 30:44
Right, right. Well, sounds like you’ve had a lot of good experiences with strip tilling. And, you know, what would you say, is a little bit of advice for someone that would want to try it?

Sam Johnson 30:58
Like, my dad always says, You don’t know unless you try. And it’s, it’s hard because it’s, you know, it’s a big investment unless you can find a neighbor or somebody that has money to try it. But it’s, I don’t remember how much this one cost, but it’s a big chunk, you know, and this one’s getting ours is getting pretty old. And we’ve been looking at new ones now. And there’s a lot different, more companies that have them and you can demo them. So I mean, there’s that if you wanted to try it, demo it. The big thing is to if you don’t have GPS, you gotta be awake, awake. When you’re, you gotta, you gotta pay attention, because if you missed the row, it’s just like, no tilling. So and that’s a big difference if you miss it, but it’s worth a shot. It saves you fuel and saves you time. I give her whirl.

Will Fulwider 31:55
Sounds like pretty good advice to me.

Michael Geissinger 31:57
Give her a whirl. Hear it straight from Sam Johnson by River Falls. So I’d like to thank you, Sam for taking some time to be on the episode today. Appreciate that.

Sam Johnson 32:09
Yeah, no problem.

Will Fulwider 32:12
Thanks for listening. This has been Field Notes from UW Madison Extension. My name is Will Fulwider regional crops educator for Dane and Dodge counties. And I was joined by my co host Michael Geissinger. outreach specialists in Northwest Wisconsin for the nutrient and pest management program of UW Madison. A big thank you to Joe Ryan for creating our theme music and Abby Wilkymaky for our logo. If you have any questions about anything you’ve heard today, or about your farming practices in general, reach out to the extension agriculture educators serving your region.