Untold Stories: Forty Years of Field Research on Root Diseases of Wheat

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Untold Stories • Chapter 2

Acquiring My Own Line of Field Equipment For the first 10 years of my career, I depended entirely on research programs and faculty (actually their technicians) in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and ARS to plant my field experiments, whether as a cooperator, as a favor, or more commonly as a loan of their equipment. This included my first experiments with wheat direct-seeded (no-till planted) into standing stubble on the PCFS. Roland Schirman, ARS weed scientist at Pullman, generously loaned me a drill he built for direct-seeding (known as USDA I), followed by his second and improved drill (USDA II), which we hauled to Lind. There we used a station tractor to conduct experiments on the influence of direct-seeding on take-all of wheat in my continuous monoculture wheat plot. I would later have access to USDA III, an 8-ft. version of the commercially available Yielder Drill built by the Yielder manufacturer in Spokane. This drill was equipped with heavy-duty, disk row openers for placement of seed and starter fertilizer, and another set of disks for placement of anhydrous ammonia in a deep band between the rows. Of course, an experienced operator came with this drill.

Orville Vogel, personally or directing others at Bill’s Welding in Pullman, built my first drill after he retired (Fig. 2.3). It had four row openers salvaged from a John Deere HZ drill such as used for deep-furrow planting winter wheat into fallow.

Originally invented and perfected by Robert Zimmerman of Almira, Washington, and Walt Nelson, these openers consisted of a steel hoe-type opener for seed placement, positioned between two halves of a packer wheel, known as a split packer wheel. The openers were spaced 16 in. apart and placed seed into moist soil below a dust mulch, sometimes more than 4 in. deep, while pushing (essentially “bulldozing”) the dust mulch into the space between the rows so the seed ended up covered approximately 1 in. (2-3 cm) deep with moist soil. The split packer wheel was designed to compress the soil on the sides rather than directly on the seed, important for the semi-dwarf varieties such as Gaines that were unable to emerge through 4 in. of dust mulch like standard-height varieties.

This same concept worked perfectly for direct-seeding into heavy residue except that crop residue rather than dry soil mulch was moved away from the seed row and into the space between the rows. The four row openers were mounted on a frame by a three-point hitch on a tractor so they could be lowered for planting

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and lifted for turning and traveling. A commercially available cone-type distributor was mounted on the drill, along with a seat for the operator who would drop a predetermined amount of seed from a paper envelope so that it passed through a funnel onto an inverted cone and distributed uniformly around the edge of a brass turn table. The seed then dropped through an opening equally and over a fan-like spinner into four tubes that led to the four row openers. With a mechanism to adjust the distance required for a complete revolution of the turn table,

Figure 2.3.  Four-row drill built by Orville Vogel for seeding plots of different varieties or the same variety with a different seed treatment in four rows of any length between 5 and 30 ft. long, and equipped with a box on the back to apply dry granular material, such as fertilizer or fungicide. It worked equally well for either direct-seeding or seeding into a prepared seed bed such as summer fallow, for which these row openers were designed. (Courtesy R. J. Cook)

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and hence complete delivery of the predetermined amount of seed, it was possible to plant four-row plots of any length between 5 and 30 ft. (1.5 and 9 m), with each four-row plot receiving a different variety or treatment on the seed. We later added the means to apply dry phosphorus or a granular fungicide into the seed row with the seed at the time of planting. Vogel either paid for the parts or they were donated, because I never got a bill for the drill.

My second drill was built by Erik Larson, a mechanical engineer with The McGregor Company of Colfax, Washington. This drill was used by Tim Murray for seeding into prepared seedbeds, usually summer fallow, and by me for directseeding (Fig. 2.4). Placed into service in the fall of 1986, it was equipped with

Figure 2.4. Eight-row cone seeder built by Erik Larson with The McGregor Company of Colfax, Washington, equipped to provide a fertilizer solution below the seed and shown here direct-seeding into standing stubble of a previous cereal crop. (Courtesy R. J. Cook)

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eight ACRAPlant row openers, each with a rubber packer wheel and spaced 12 in. apart for seed placement. A steel shank similar to the shanks The McGregor Company used on their commercial fertilizer applicators was mounted in front of each opener for deep-banding a fertilizer solution below the seed in each row (Fig. 2.5). Two 30-gal tanks were mounted on the drill for liquid fertilizer, which was distributed through a manifold with orifices that could be changed according to the rate of fertilizer solution desired. As with the four-row drill built by Vogel, this drill was equipped with a cone distributor that delivered seed equally to the eight row openers at the length of row desired. It was also possible to plant rows in pairs 7 in. apart with 17 in. (17.5 × 42.5 cm) between pairs of rows (Fig. 2.6), with a fertilizer shank positioned between each pair of rows. This drill allowed us to fertilize “on the go” at the time of planting at the precise rate needed based on a soil test and predetermined yield goal. This greatly improved the agronomics of our field-plot research, with less variability among replicates of a given treatment.

Sometime in the late 1990s, I met Kevin Anderson from Andover, South Dakota at a winter meeting of Concord drill owners in Fargo, North Dakota.

Figure 2.5. Eight-row planter designed and built by Erik Larson of The McGregor Company, showing the shanks for deep-banding a fertilizer solution in front of ACRAPlant row openers for seed placement. (Courtesy R. J. Cook)

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He had a booth to display a hoe-type row opener he had invented and was manufacturing. It included a carbide steel tip with an opening for placement of liquid fertilizer in a deep band, and the means at the rear of the same hoe-type row opener to split a stream of seed into two rows spaced approximately 4 in. (15 cm) apart. It was my first meeting with Anderson, but he had called me when my book with Roger Veseth on Wheat Health Management came out (Cook and Veseth, 1991) to ask if I would speak with APS Press about a special rate if he purchased 100 copies to give to his customers.

When I finished my talk at the meeting, Anderson declared that I needed an air-seeder with his Anderson openers for direct-seeding my experiments, and that he would build it for me. I welcomed his offer but then forgot about it until one day when I received a call to tell me an 18-wheeler flatbed truck with a drill on it was at the PCFS. I rushed out there and, sure enough, Anderson’s drill (Fig. 2.7) had arrived, shipped from Andover, South Dakota, the only thing on that long flatbed. It had eight Anderson row openers spaced 12 in. apart, staggered to help clear trash, and the drill operated hydraulically to insert the openers and

Figure 2.6. Row openers with packer wheels positioned to plant rows in pairs 7 in. apart with 17 in. and a single fertilizer shank between the paired rows. (Courtesy R. J. Cook)

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lift them out of the ground. A seed box off an old drill dating back to the 1950s was mounted on the front of the drill with the means to drop seed at a predetermined rate into seed tubes where it was blown by an air stream equally to the eight openers using a Honda gasoline engine. Eight rubber-tired wheels spaced 12 in. apart on a single axle were at the rear of the drill and were aligned to pack the soil in each row. These wheels also allowed us to tow the drill behind a vehicle to sites selected for a direct-seed experiment, usually on a farm where we would use the farmer’s tractor to pull the drill.

Collaborations with Michael Horsch, Schwandorf, Germany In what would lead to another friendship and another drill for direct-seeding, I received a phone call in the late 1990s from Michael Horsch of Horsch Maschinen in Schwandorf, Germany, whom I had never met, asking if he could bring a bus load of farmers to see my research. This group, primarily from Germany, was already seeing research on sugar beets in my home area of the Red River Valley in Minnesota and North Dakota and would fly next to Spokane, Washington where they had a bus waiting. I agreed, and within a few days the bus was parked

Figure 2.7.  An eight-row air-seeder equipped with Anderson row openers that placed liquid fertilizer as a deep band

and split seed into a row above and on each side of the deep band. The rubber-tired wheels at the rear were for packing soil in the seed row and for towing. The drill was built by Kevin Anderson of Andover, South Dakota. (Courtesy R. J. Cook)

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next to an experiment Veseth and I had laid out on the PCFS to demonstrate the importance of timely and effective elimination of the green bridge for control of Rhizoctonia root rot of direct-seeded wheat. How Horsch knew of me and my research he never told me, but he did say that the agriculture professors in Germany had abandoned the farmer and hence, he had to come to America to see research useful to farmers. I lived up to his expectations because the experiment I showed them clearly demonstrated the benefit of early elimination of volunteer cereals and grass weeds (i.e., the green bridge).

The next year, Horsch was back with another bus load of farmers, which, as he had explained the year before, represented 25,000 to 30,000 hectares of farmed land, much of it previously state-owned farms in former East Germany. I then made two trips in two different years to his home and business in Schwandorf, now the headquarters for Horsch Maschinen GmbH, in partnership with Kevin Anderson, and possibly the largest manufacturer of farm machinery in Europe.

This includes design and manufacture of the Horsch-Anderson drill equipped with an improved version of Anderson openers for direct-seeding (Fig. 2.8), available in widths up to 60 ft. (20 m) (Fig. 2.9), and engineered to fold up so it can be pulled on a road (Fig. 2.10 and Fig. 2.11).

This business is located on the original Horsch family farmstead where existing buildings during the startup years and formerly used for livestock, machine storage, or other needs of a typical farm had been converted to uses such as parts storage, machine assembly, and paint shop. I was told the Horsch family still farmed several thousand hectares, much in former East Germany, most of it cereals and canola either direct-seeded or planted with minimum tillage.

Horsch’s uncle told me it took about 5 years into direct-seeding before they had enough nerve to sell their moldboard plows while their neighbors continued to plow. Horsch explained facetiously that the neighbors liked to see the black exhaust from their tractors when plowing 8 to 10 in. deep.

One new addition Michael Horsch made to the original Horsch farmstead was to add a machine shop with a kitchen and space for his customers and potential customers to meet and hear invited speakers. His philosophy was to win his customers through their stomachs, and that included meat, potatoes, and gravy for lunch, after a morning program and before they walked around to look at

Boots in the Field

Figure 2.8. A redesigned Anderson opener used on the Horsch-Anderson drill. Note the silver hoe in front for deep-

banding fertilizer and the yellow shoe behind the hoe for distribution of seed split into two rows 4 in. apart. The disks assure that the seed is covered before the seed row is packed by a trailing wheel. (Courtesy R. J. Cook—© APS)

Figure 2.9. A 60-ft.- (20-m)-wide Horsch drill used for direct-seeding on the Agro Soyus mega farm near

Dnepropetrovsk in Ukraine, with the seed cart followed by the fertilizer cart. (Reproduced, by permission, from Cook, R. J. 2006. Toward cropping systems that enhance productivity and sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:18389-18394)

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Figure 2.10. Horsch-Anderson direct-seed drill 60 ft. (20 m) wide when fully expanded, but shown here with two 16-ft.- (5-m)-wide booms on each side partly folded. (Courtesy R. J. Cook—© APS)

Figure 2.11. Horsch-Anderson direct-seed drill 60 ft. (20 m) fully folded to a final width of approximately 16 ft.

(Courtesy R. J. Cook—© APS)

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the Horsch line of equipment in the afternoon. The machine shop was spotlessly clean, as was the case with his manufacturing plant I visited in 2006 in Ukraine.

Another change from the original farmstead at Schwandorf was to establish a 20-A (8-ha) site for experimentation with crop residue management or different row openers for direct-seeding—or to address issues he and others had encountered with crop residue management when direct-seeding. On my second trip, I participated in a field day that followed a meeting in the machine shop, and where Horsch had set up a demonstration plot on green bridge management similar to the experiment I had shown him and his farmer entourage in Pullman a few years earlier. But rather than Rhizoctonia root rot favored by his green bridge deliberately left unmanaged until just prior to seeding, the wheat in this experiment had take-all.

It was at an international no-till conference in 2006 hosted by the Agro Soyus mega farm near Dnepropetrovsk in southern Ukraine, close to the Black Sea, where I asked Horsch if he would consider building a no-till drill for my program, especially for use on the Cook Agronomy Farm. He agreed to pay for the labor if my program would pay for the parts and shipping. The drill he built, which is now in use on the Cook Agronomy Farm (Fig. 2.12), is an air-seeder

Figure. 2.12. Plot drill built by Horsch Maschinen in Schwandorf, Germany for planting small fields or large plots. This

drill is used on the Cook Agronomy Farm and WSU-Camas Creek Ranch project (Chapter 15). (Courtesy R. J. Cook—© APS)