FARGO, N.D. — Standing water is not a pretty sight, especially with today’s crop prices.
“With $7 corn and $10 beans, losing 20 acres to standing water is something you just do not want to do,” said Perry Rust, owner of Rust Sales in Harwood, North Dakota.
His solution is a disc-style V-ditcher that looks like two coulters welded together. He runs it down the centre of each surface drain to create a well defined V-ditch six inches wide and six inches deep.
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Rust said the past decade of wet weather has challenged the traditional notion of what a surface drain should do. The kind of surface ditches that once were adequate no longer drain the field quickly enough. Crop damage is the inevitable result.
“Whether you’re in total no-till or you do cultivation, the fact is that your seeding operation will run across most of your ditches,” Rust said. “You create hundreds and thousands of these little dams across your drains. They’re only fractions of an inch high, but put them all together and they impede the water flow.”
Producers have no choice but to farm across ditches, but they build more obstructions on each pass.
Waiting until standing water appears is the wrong approach.
“Once they have standing water, a lot of guys put those narrow ditching tires on their ATVs. You really make a mess of the field and damage a lot of crop when you try to get in there and work in the mud with any kind of machine. I think a proactive approach is better.”
Rust advised taking the V-Ditcher into the field immediately after seeding. If farmers harrow after seeding, they should use the V-Ditcher after harrowing. The main thing is to create the V-ditches before it rains.
“You make a single pass with the V-Ditcher down the middle of every drain. It slices through any soil or residue you dragged into the drain while seeding. It doesn’t take much time. You can really fly down the ditches. Just follow the drain pattern that snakes across the field. You end up with a nice clean V that cuts through all your little dirt dams.”
He said the V-ditch operation is easier if the surface drains are delineated on GPS maps in the cab.
The V-Ditcher mounts on a tractor’s three point hitch and is loaded with tractor suitcase weights.
“You need a decent sized tractor because it ends up weighing about 5,000 pounds by the time you’re ready to go.”
The Rust V-Ditcher sells for $2,100 US. For more information, contact Rust at 701-282-9194 or visit www.rustsales.com.
