By Brian Hefty

We’ve probably put in 75% of the tile we’ve installed in standing crop!  As soon as I say this to most farmers, the response I commonly get is, “Don’t you ruin a bunch of your crop?”  After studying this for 5 years and looking at our yield monitor data, I can give you a definitive answer… No, we don’t ruin much crop.  In fact, I’d argue that we make this year’s crop even better.  Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned about tiling in-crop.

  1. Do it early in the season.  We will tile in standing corn until it’s about 1 foot tall.  We then tile through soybeans until they are about 1 foot tall.  This usually gives us 6 weeks to tile each spring/early summer.  We never tile before planting, because the way we look at is if the ground is fit to tile, it should be fit to plant/till/apply herbicide, and we want to get those jobs done as early as possible in the spring.
  2. Don’t use a blade to level out your soil.  After tiling, there is always dirt that you’ve pulled up.  Rather than taking a blade or disk or anything to level that out – because keep in mind we’re talking in-crop now – we suggest simply driving back along the side to push the dirt back toward the center and down a little.  We do not recommend driving right over the center of the trench.  You don’t want to crush the tile you just laid, so be a little careful.
  3. Spot projects are better to do in-crop than pattern-tiling.  This is pretty obvious, but if you’re going to put lines in every 30 feet, you’ll tear up more crop than if you’re putting a line in every 250 feet.  However, even if you had to do some pattern-tiling in-crop, it’s probably not that bad a deal.  If you are tiling, chances are your crop isn’t going to be fantastic to begin with.  If you get that tile laid early in the year, the crop has that much more time to recover and utilize your now well-drained soil.  Plus, always keep in mind that this fall may not be great for tiling.  A couple years ago, we literally had 2 days to tile in the fall on our farm.  That’s it.  Sure, the great fall of 2011 is fresh in your mind, but not every fall is like that.
  4. Plan ahead.  What we shoot for on our farm is the day after we finish corn planting, we go right into soybean planting.  The day we finish soybean planting, we go right into tiling.  You can only do this if you’ve done all your prep work this winter.  Get your tile on the farm now.  Get your permits done now.  Make sure you call One-Call several days in advance.  Get your plow and tractor ready so it’s hooked up, or if you’re using that tractor for planting, you can at least hook it up quickly once you’re done seeding.  Also, put your tentative tile design in place.  You can certainly adjust this when you’re out in the field, but this will help you and anyone assisting you so you can move quickly when the time comes.
  5. Tiling in-crop is actually really fun.  Once your crop starts to come up, you can already see areas in fields that are suffering, so you know you’re out there doing some good.  There’s usually lots of sub-soil moisture early in the season so your plow pulls easy and the water comes pouring out the end of the tile when you install it.  Seeing that is quite rewarding.  Also, I’ve found our guys get a lot more tile in the ground each day when the weather is warm and day length is long.  Tiling in June is WAY more fun than tiling in December.  If you’re not tiling in-crop, in my opinion you’re missing out on the best time of year to tile.
  6. The sooner you get your tile in the ground, the faster your yields go up.  If you don’t get your tile in this year, it’s another year lost in terms of high yield.  Beyond that, don’t forget that tiled land often has fewer seed and seedling diseases, less compaction, fewer high salt and high pH issues, and a lot fewer pieces of equipment that get stuck.

If you’ve never tried tiling in-crop before, do some this year.  Once you do, I’m guessing you’ll soon adopt the same strategy we have on our farm, which is tiling in-crop every year as much as we can.