Twister customers in North Dakota and Minnesota use their Mandako Twister tools to do something they call zone tillage.
“Subsoil tillage or subsoiling is one strategy for ameliorating compaction below a ‘normal’ depth of tillage at eight to 12 inches,” said agricultural extension agent Jodi DeJong-Hughes of the University of Minnesota.
“The goal of this very aggressive tillage operation is to break up compacted layers in the soil profile to a depth of 16 to 20 inches and help with water infiltration and root growth.
“Zone tillage is a specific form of deep tillage designed to only disturb the soil in a narrow band directly below the crop row. The soil and residue in the inter-row are undisturbed providing surface cover and protecting the soil against erosion.”
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Dwight Johnson sells Mandako Twisters for North Country Marketing in Fargo, N.D., covering North and South Dakota.
He said zone tillage machines are used in the fall to run coulters directly over rows of crop that’s just been harvested.
“You still don’t run deep,” he said.
“The Twister is really heavy duty, but it’s not intended to go deep. You still run at two or three inches. But the secret is that you run at 10 m.p.h. We’ve had agronomists check these fields and they always tell us that the fracturing goes down 12 inches or more, but only if you’re running fast like that.”
The strip is usually about five inches wide. The gap between the zone till strips should remain unaffected with 100 percent residue cover.
