Should I Cultivate?

I grew up on a farm in the late 50's and 60's.  One of the certainties of summer was cultivating corn and soybeans.  By throwing a little soil into the row, small weeds could be controlled even in the rows to a certain extent especially in corn.  We often supplemented the cultivation in corn with 2,4-D.  The down side of cultivating was staying awake and staying out of the crop.  It is tedious work.  Researchers at the time found some small yield advantage to cultivating, possibly because of an aeration effect.  Atrazine came along and with other soil applied herbicides, we were able to avoid cultivating out corn here and there by spraying instead.

Mechanical weed control in soybeans never seemed to work as well as corn even if we did more cultivations.  In some fields, infestations were so bad that cultivation was needed once a week.  In soybeans, mechanical weed control always seemed to include a hoe, a weed hook,  or a machete. I have never seen figures, but I suspect that herbicide use in soybeans increased yields dramatically.  Researchers also found a bit of a yield advantage to soybeans in rows less than 15 inches apart.  With narrow row soybeans and bigger farms, cultivating went the way of mule power on many farms.

With herbicide resistant weeds in the picture, some are advocating cultivation as an alternative or maybe as another mode of action for weed control.  Is this a bad idea?  I don't think so.  Maybe it is time for a ridgetill comeback.  Cultivators with disks and sweeps, may be more effective than sweeps alone.  Some wet fields may benefit from the aeration of cultivation as well.  This might be a good reason to get RTK added to your autosteer for more accuracy and to keep from cultivating out rows.  With bigger farms, can we cultivate everything?  Probably not, but it might be something to try in problem areas.  Much like herbicides, cultivation is more effective on small weeds.  Some sort of a band attachment on the cultivator might allow spraying the rows in the same trip as mechanical cultivation.

It will be interesting to see what happens.  I will post a picture when I see cultivation in progress.