Introduction
Meet Bill Bohling from Lacrosse, IN. Bill farms with Schaefer Farms. Schaefer Farms has two subsurface drip systems on 53 acres, one installed in 2017 and the other in 2019. They have another field scheduled for installation this fall. The drip fields are normally 2 years corn, 1year soybeans.
The subsurface drip irrigation system is user friendly and easy to use once you’ve learned how to run it. It gives you the ability to run nutrients whenever you like; Bill has run nutrients through his drip system 26 times as of August of this year.
One of Bills systems is running off 3 25-foot-deep wells that each produce 80 gallons per minute. Bill’s second system is running off a horizontal well that produces about 300 gallons per minute. The two well systems provide adequate water for the acreage and were built to be able to expand so the new drip system going in this fall will be running off one of those water sources.
Odd Shaped Fields
For Bill, water efficiency isn’t as relevant as the ability to irrigate odd, shaped fields. This is the reason Bill had the first system installed. The first field he installed was because he had a railroad on one side and his house on a corner of the field. SDI (subsurface drip irrigation) gave him the ability to irrigate all his acres for the same price as a center pivot, which wouldn’t cover the entire field.
Another benefit of SDI is being able to fertigate at the exact time plants need nutrients, instead of putting the nutrients out early, and hoping for the best. Bill stated that on most of their ground they’re pre plant anhydrous, but on the drip systems, they’re running 28 or melted urea throughout the growing season. The 26 times he ran nutrients, probably 20 of them were nitrogen. That gives him the ability to run less nitrogen for more bushels.
Efficient Nitrogen Use
Bill is shooting for .7 – .8 range on nitrogen use efficiency. Bill has put out 240 units, so he’s hoping to see 300 bushels per acre corn from that.
Operation and Maintenance for Subsurface Drip Irrigation
One part of the operation and maintenance of a drip system is start up before planting. One aspect of spring start up is testing for leaks. Bill said he normally has 2-4 leaks per system from cattle digging holes. Pressure and flows are checked as well. Acid is flushed through the lines every 30 inches of water, which would be every 3 years for them. In the fall, winterizing includes having the lines blown out by an air compressor to remove any build up inside the lines or emitters. For Bill, it only takes a few hours to do this for each system.
Tissue and Fertility
Bill has found that it works best for him to test in season at V2, V4, V8, R2 and R4. He then uses those results (and the results from prior years) to build a personalized program for his soil. He is able to know what plants have needed in the past and have it ready and available at the correct time in the current year.
Conclusion
We asked Bill what got him excited about drip and the future of SDI. His response?
“Definitely the ability to manage a crop and put nutrients out. I can mix up a cage tank, set it there, set it to run five different times, I can set it to run all at once, but I can manage that crop with what it needs right now, as soon as I want to do it. I can do some of that with my center pivot, but it is so much easier with my drip system to just hook it up, set how many gallons it’s going to run, and it just does its thing.” Bill Bohling
