Crust-Busting Cultivator Fitted With No-Till Coulters

Crust-Busting Cultivator Fitted With No-Till Coulters CULTIVATORS Cultivators (58C) 20-5-11 "You could see the difference in my corn within 24 hours. It had turned from yellow to green," says Stan Shrock about results he got with a "crust buster" he built by mounting no-till coulters instead of shanks on a row-crop cultivator. The problem was his Tampico, Ill., farm received heavy rainfall early in the season followed by a hot dry spell, turning his soil hard as a rock. "You couldn't get through fields with a conventional cultivator let alone a rotary hoe," he says. "So I came up with a crust-busting cultivator that gets a few weeds but most importantly breaks up the soil crust to aerate it. I used it on 400 acres of corn that was 6 to 8 in. tall and got a 9 bu. per acre yield increase with just one pass over a round I left uncultivated for a check strip." The rig consists of an R 12 Deere cultivator with 4-in. sq. toolbar. He bought twenty-two 21-in. dia. Yetter no-till fluted coulters from an ag supply store. He re-moved the cultivator's shovel shanks and clamped the coulters in their place, two per row on outside rows and three per row on inside rows. "They slid right on because the shanks are basically the same size," he says. "It was really simple." He added 10 Deere tractor suitcase weights to the back of the cultivator to help it penetrate the hard soil. "It penetrated 2 to 2 1/2 in. deep, shattering soil into fist-size pieces diagonally toward the stalks," he says. "I pulled it with a Deere 4020 at speeds of up to 10 mph." Out-of-pocket expense was $2,400. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Stan Shrock, 1289 Luther Road, Tampico, Ill. 61283 (ph 815 438-2219).

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