MINTON, Sask. – Weed control with tillage can be a hit and miss proposition. When field crop acres are organic, poor weed control can spell big trouble.
Ken Tatarliov started the conversion to organic on his farm near Minton in 1990 and was certified in 1994.
“We had spent some time getting experience on how poor a weed kill we were getting. In 1996, we purchased some new cultivator shovels and we didn’t get a very good kill. It didn’t look like things were going to improve, so we decided to create some ideas of our own,” he said.
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“It was during spring work. We probably should have worked a field twice to kill all the weeds, but I didn’t. The weeds came up and it set the crop back. The big thing was we’d go over the field but we’d get a poor result from the shallow rooted weeds.”
Tatarliov felt the shovels didn’t give enough soil disturbance on the first pass. The root systems of shallow rooted weeds passed over the top of the shovel blades.
“The only place we’d have effective weed kill was right in front of the shank, and the harrows at the back. We’ve always maintained we need good harrows on the cultivator to do their job as well.”
The initial test was a 10 inch metal fin, welded perpendicular to the end of the cultivator shovel. His first set had eight inch fins.
“It disturbed the soil and got a wonderful kill, but we had concerns with when the soil was moist, especially when spring working in stubble, they would plug.”
Tatarliov experimented with different angles and lengths and ended up with a 4.5 inch fin on a deep tillage shovel. The slope of the fin is similar to that of the neck of the shovel.
“With the Nok Ons for the air seeder, we’re going to shorten them up a bit more. It’s material we don’t need to have on the shovel. We’re working shallower with the air seeder when we’re seeding, so the fins can be somewhat shorter.”
Tatarliov went through more than a dozen designs before he settled on the final setup. He wanted something that was standard across all sweeps.
“If it was a Nok On sweep, 43 degree, 50 degree or 54 degree shovel, we wanted something that those changes wouldn’t make a difference to what we were trying to do,” he said.
“It’s a pretty standard fin that fits on any sweep that we use in the field. It’s just as effective with one sweep opposed to any other. We were most concerned about the bolt-on deep tillage sweeps, (but they worked fine).”
Tatarliov chose a soft, flat steel bar material for the fins. It’s a quarter-inch thick, two inches wide and about 4.5 inches long on the deep tillage sweeps.
He wanted to put as much steel as possible on the top of the blade, so there was a longer weld to make it stronger and wear longer.
“The shovel does most of the work, so it’s a high-carbon hard steel. The fin itself is a soft, flat bar material. It shows very little wear because the motion of the soil has already been eliminated by the shovel itself. All that’s happening around the fin is the soil falling into it. That’s one of the reasons we stayed away from a high carbon steel fin. It wasn’t necessary.”
Another reason to avoid high carbon steel was the fear that if it hit a stone, it would break rather than bend.
“At the end of the day when we’re fueling up, the cultivator is out of the ground and if there’s any that are bent, I take a pipe wrench and straighten them up.”
For shovels beside the tires on the cultivator, the shanks often hit a stone and force the blade of the shovel into the side of the tire, causing a flat. Because the fins bend inward toward the shank in that situation, he leaves those bent and has reduced the number of flat tires.
Tatarliov said the fins provide better control of both shallow rooted and tap rooted weeds.
“The shallow, bunch root system – there wasn’t enough soil disturbance to kill these weeds effectively. They would slide over top of the blade of the shovel and keep growing.
“With the tap rooted weeds, if they’re close to the edge of the blade of the shovel, they slip around. The survival rate of these tap rooted weeds in that position was pretty good. And these are the ones that survive the droughts, steadily compete with the crop through the year and because they’re such a strong plant, will set more seeds.”
Tatarliov said the fins add extra soil disturbance for the shallow rooted plants. The soil falling away from the shank falls into the fin.
Between the fin and the shank, there’s a certain amount of soil disturbance. It tumbles and mixes, helping break the roots loose for a better kill.
“The tap roots no longer slip around the end of the shovel. The fin acts like a knife going through the soil. It appears that whatever’s in front of the blade of the shovel stays there. It doesn’t work its way around. It hooks on the fin and goes over the blade of the shovel. When a tap root does that, it’s dead.”
The nose and the blade of the shovels show the most wear. With conventional shovels, there’s always a concern with the blade of the shovel wearing narrower, letting more weeds slip around the edge.
With his fins, the added bit of metal at the tip of the blade has eliminated that wear.
“We’re saying that from what we’re seeing, we’re killing weeds in four places – the centre of the shank, the fin on either side and the harrows at the back.”
Because of better weed kill efficiency, Tatarliov makes fewer summerfallow passes each year. With conventional shovels he’d typically be back in the field 10 days after the first pass, trying to get the weeds he’d missed.
“This is where we noticed our first savings. We omitted the second round of summerfallow. I had to stop and wait for the weeds to grow because it killed all the weeds on me.”
Before developing the shovel fins, Tatarliov used to work his fields in the spring before seeding. Then he bought an air seeder with smaller Nok On sweeps and tried the system with it.
“There was just as much soil disturbance as the deep tillage shovels. As a result, we’re not preworking many of our spring seeding acres. It gets a good enough kill for us and there’s not enough weeds that survive to take over parts of the crop.
“If there are spots that weeds flush in the spring, we will go over those areas. All of our preworking that is done is selective.”
Tatarliov can add fins from 11 inch Nok On sweeps up to 18 inch deep tillage sweeps, but he seldom goes over 16 inches.
“We don’t like for someone to bring shovels to us and we put fins on for them. It’s much easier for us to use existing products we have. We work with McKay in Regina. We put the fins on, put the shovels on a pallet and ship them out.
“As a rule of thumb, it’s around $2.50 more per sweep. Our 16 inch quarter inch deep tillage sweeps are $16.53 right now (October 2006), though we may be looking at a price increase.”
In 1998, Tatarliov started keeping track of how the finned sweeps performed.
“From our own trials, with a 31 foot cultivator, for us to put the fins on cost us $77.50 (more than standard shovels). This shovel, we can get two seasons out of it on our land. Through those two years, we save about $1,700 in fuel from reduced passes. That doesn’t include our time, wear and tear on the machine or better weed control.”
Tatarliov’s target market has been his fellow organic farmers.
“There are so many farmers that are no-till, continuous crop or chem fallow (that they don’t need tillage equipment). We’ve got farmers in Alberta and Saskatchewan using these right now.”
Some conventional farmers till and he feels these sweeps would work for them, too.
For more information, contact Ken Tatarliov at 306-969-2275 or www.bemaindustries.com.
