By DARCY DOUGHERTY MAULSBY
Farm News employees writer
DES MOINES – Subsurface tile drains have prolonged been an important device to boost the productivity of Iowa’s farmland, and today’s land improvement contractors and farmers are seeking at new possibilities to maximize tiling while guarding soil and water quality.
“Tiling offers one of the most successful ways to enhance your crop yields with no modifying seed populations, herbicide rates and other inputs,” said Dr. Matt Helmers, an Iowa State University Extension agricultural and water sources engineer who spoke not too long ago at the Iowa Land Improvement Contractors’ Association’s 53rd annual meeting in Des Moines.”They are not creating any a lot more land, so we need to do the best task we can with it.”
It pays to correctly dimension your mains, added Helmers, who noted that below-developed tiling systemscan influence yield by as much as 25 percent. “When you commence with a excellent foundation, you can add more laterals to it, as essential, to optimize the production you are obtaining from every single acre.”
ISU researchers have also been studying the advantages of shallower drain placements, which can help curb nitrogen loss. At a internet site close to Crawfordsville in southeast Iowa, researchers have compared two.5-foot to 3-foot drain depths with 4-foot drain depths at 60-foot spacings. They’ve observed up to a 40 % reduction in the volume of water coming out of the shallower drain lines, which lowers the nitrate load by about 40 percent.
“It is not altering the nitrate concentration, but it’s quick-circuiting the nitrate load to the stream,” explained Helmers. He additional shallow-drainage functions like year-round managed drainage.
“Also, we have not witnessed a yield decline with the shallower drainage. This shows that you can influence not only the land’s productivity, but water high quality with drainage practices.”
You can contact Darcy Dougherty Maulsby by e-mail at yettergirl@yahoo.com.