I have no personal experience of it but I have just written an essay on it!

Essentially it has its benefits, such as warmer soils, but also has its downfalls, like impeding the rooting of the plant in the vertical plane, and can cause fanging.

If you are on lighter soils it is a real option, on heavy soils you should consider the soil's history .

Hope this helps a bit, and if you want to know a bit more of the science I can go into more detail.

HTH 

Tim 

At the Beet 2008 meeting they briefly mentioned min-tilling beet. I have never seen it done but according to them trials suggest yields were maintained on light to medium soils although yields did drift off on the heavy land. To get round this problem trials are going on currently on the continent where a flatlift type machine is used with the space seeder boxes drilling into the grooves left behind the legs. This technique would probably get over the yield drop off they had on there heavy land trials as they only did shallow cultivation. Certainly with any min tilling you wouldnt get heavy rutting when harvesting the crop as the soil would be firmer to travel on, thereby making it more practical to min till the following crop afterwards instead of ploughing. Time will tell but I would say its only round the corner.

Cheers Matt

We pondered the idea, and are on very heavy soils. We run a non-inversion policy generally, but plough for beet. This years crop is going in after spring beans. We ran over the bean stubble with a set of discs and press, and were very tempted to leave the resulting tilth and drill the beet into it in spring. We decided not to eventually as we expected the tilth not to make it through winter without turning back to mud. On the other hand, if we had left the bean stubbles over winter, I expect we would have had a crack.

We are waiting to hear about promised developements in winter drilled beet, as this would min-till fine for us.

Re following crop, we havent ploughed after beet for 5 years or so now. Late or early lifted (late for us being mid Nov) we have got a good crop of wheat in, and in a timely manner. Turning over the nice tilth left after the beet harvester would be sacrelige - its hard enough to get one in the first place here. 

YES PLEASE. I BELEAVE IT IS A PRACTICE USED A LOT ON THE CONTINANT.JOHN.

I Have tryed this for a few years.with mixed results.firstly yeilds,i found about the same,the best ploughed fields may better min till,but some ploughed can be worse. After a dry summer i have cultivated to about 6inch + if level leave alone,spray in october with 1liter round up or reglone,you dont wont to kill all growth but leave roots alive but steady the regrowth so by spring the wind can dry the top up a bit.Roundup 48hr pre drilling.If much trash will need double disc openers on drill.the key is to not get to much regrowth.Dont over work as when worms and roots have done there work for you the soil will look after its self,dont work when wet.last year i got it wrong, as winter was soooo wet and mild,i didnt get it sprayed in october and there was no other chance befor 10th march when the  wheat was about G/S 32.HAD to cult 2 or 3 times to get it drilled,but moisture was there, tilth was good and trash keep sun off,and yeild ended up at 27.5 ton acre ave.Some ploughed fields didnt grow till late may.Also trash will help stop a cap forming,which is a big problem here.This year as combines damaged the soil so much and i felt it was to wet to deep lift,i have ploughed again,and leveled the soil behind the plough,which is drilling well.Sometimes we have cultivated in the frost which has worked ok,but must be hard and dry.We would have been ok if we had left cults till latter,but had potatoes to harvest when it dryed up.WHY NOT PLOUGH well it offten looks like the moon, hills and holes which fill up with dry dusty frost mould,and maybe dont grow or get ate by soil pests.COST  DIESEL extre passes to level off.I wont be  concerned to much if we get paid so as not to over winter plough.Bring on the cash.   JOHN