How does the drought affect my soils?

With at least a moderate drought seeming to be locked in for now, we might want to consider soil management for next year's crop.

• If your crop is a failure should you save money on fertilizer next year? 

That is a big maybe.  If you have a reliable soil test, check it to see where you might be.  Some sampling done early last fall may not be reliable because of how dry it was then.  Soil test at several days to a week after a real soaking rain if you are not sure.  Yes that will happen sometime.

• Your no-tilled soils are really hard, should you till them?  

I would give this a big no.  Those cracks out there are really helping do what tillage would do.  They are opening up the soil to air intake and moisture intake.  Hang in there on this and don't ruin how your soil has gotten into condition over the years.

• Is this a good time to rip your ground?  

If you are in a system where you till, this might be a good time to get more aggressive with it.  If we are still really dry after harvest and you have some compaction issues, rip it as deep as possible.  Keep in mind that rippers will pull hard and bring up bring chunks, but that is not a bad thing.  Just know that you will need a smoothing pass in the spring.  If you have destroyed corn or if you did not double crop the wheat, tillage could begin now if your conservation plan allows it.

• Are those big cracks a problem?  

Only if you drop something into them.  The big cracks are one of nature's ways of doing tillage.  They will help get rid of some of your compaction issues.  5 years of wet springs left us with lots of them.  As dry as it is, places that were worked or harvested wet still look worse than everywhere else. 

• Will your soil test be accurate?

Pretty much everything can be a bit off when soil is sampled very dry.  That includes pH, potassium, phosphorous, and micro-nutrients.  We were sampling in moist soil all spring, so we should be good.  It depends on what your conditions were.  I do like spring soil tests in general.