“The first nice day in spring you are a week behind in fieldwork. The second nice day you are two weeks behind.” Yes, this old adage still rings true today.

We have more acres to cover, and often I find that equipment size has not kept up with the number of cows added or the forage that is planted and harvested.

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to help balance the workload with the equipment that you have available. Now, this likely won’t work for this growing season, but keep these steps in mind for future years.

Shorter rotations

More farms are switching to shorter crop rotations. Yields will decrease over time, but with a shorter crop rotation more of the years will be at the higher yield levels.

More farms are switching to a winter forage setup for seeding. For fields that are going to be seeded down next year, farmers are planting a shorter-season corn for silage or BMR sorghum this year.

The corn is harvested so that the winter forage can be in the ground two weeks before the wheat planting date. The winter forage is harvested next spring, often with double the yields and better quality than an April-planted seeding would normally produce.

After haylage is finished, you spray a low rate of glyphosate and 15 gallons of water carrier per acre to kill any regrowth in the winter forage stubble. An hour after drying, no-till the legume crop. The result is a stand that jumps out of the ground quickly in warm soil; has less disease pressure because it is warmer; does not wash out because of the protective stubble; has more moisture at the surface from that same stubble to supply the small seedings; and eliminates the tillage and stone picking of conventional tillage.

The biggest factor is that we moved a major workload, seeding, from early April to early June when the spring field work slows while simultaneously getting far better seedings with a high degree of success.

Rotate hay to corn

The second phase of the rotation is to start the cycle of removing old hayfields by rotating to corn.

The key is using no-till to get the corn in with minimum time and equipment.

By spraying those sods with a quart of glyphosate and a quart of 2,4-D between Oct. 1 and Oct. 15, the crop can be put in without all the time, fuel and equipment needed for tillage.

I initially did this research in the early ’80s when glyphosate came on the market. It was a game-changer for having better corn, more uniform stands, higher yields, eliminating armyworm and having earlier plantings while using no-till.

By killing the sod in fall, the residue keeps the soil from washing away. Most of the residue starts to decay by spring, resulting in soil that is mellow and as soft as potting soil. This allows the planter to work better, reduces excessive down pressure and is the earliest corn to be planted because you don’t need 7 to 8 inches of soil to be dry enough to be friable for tillage; you only need the top 4 to 5 inches friable, which occurs very early because of all the holes from the dead roots of the fall-killed sod.

If your rotation is two years of corn and three to four years of alfalfa, 50% of your corn can be planted without tillage and earlier than regular corn. Research has found that first-year corn yields are 15% higher than multiyear corn.

The first year out of sod does not normally need any nitrogen other than starter, which is a major savings. Because you are only growing corn for two years there is no need for expensive stacked varieties since rootworm is not an economic problem anymore. Instead, you can focus your cost on higher fiber digestibility, soft kernel types for better feed efficiency and higher profits.

Higher rates of manure can be injected into the second-year corn to meet the crop’s nitrogen needs and increase phosphorus and potassium levels before seeding.

Example cropping sequence

For reference, here is an example cycle of a shorter cropping sequence:

Kilcer is a certified crop adviser in Kinderhook, N.Y.