Farm Week in Pictures brings a close to the planting season this week. We put in a long day Sunday, and finished on Wednesday, May 22 which happens to be our wedding anniversary. With planting over outside of a replant situation and hopefully being able to double crop soybeans after wheat what is on the table now? For starters it is now time to start feeding corn some Nitrogen, but we’re going to take a break over Memorial Day weekend and get back to it next week. Let’s wrap up planting with some pictures!
Under Cover
Remember our cereal rye cover crop. Here it is again nice and dead. We planted soybeans here in all the residue. Hopefully next week I’ll show you some soybeans popping through!
Pit Stop
The planter and tractor making a short stop to refuel and reload with seed.
Almost Done
Empty bags and boxes. Millions of seeds in the ground!
Green Beans
This is what the last filling of the planter looked like. The last of our beans mixed in with some beans from previous planter cleanouts. Two of these are the exact same variety only one has a seed treatment. All our pretty much the same maturity.
Head Towards the Light
A popcorn plant finds the light! Did you know that the ability of plants to grow towards the sun is called phototropism? Plants know to have there roots and stems grow a certain direction by gravitropism. See? I remember stuff from college.
Stand Up and Be Counted
This week I took five random counts of emerged corn plants in our yield contest plot. We wantedto push the population level a little bit over our average 32,000-34,000 plants/acre. My orange string is 17.5′ long. That length represents 1/1000th of an acre. My counts resulted in an average emerged population of 36,000 plants per acre. A very good start!
AgNerd!
Mobile technology is spreading rapidly across the ag industry. Now that planting is over I’m transferring data collected during planting over to my iPad with the John Deere Mobile Farm Manager App. Now I can have maps on hand at all times that show variety, seeding rates, and more.
Bust That Crust!
Soybeans are pretty tough plants. We were rained out of this field last Friday. A hard rain on tilled ground can leave a crust when the surface dries. Soybeans can lift quite a lot of weight as they emerge, but we though a another rain was needed to help this field emerge. As rain kept getting pulled from the forecast we made a decision to get out a tool we seldom use anymore, but it’s a tool you definitely want to keep around in case of a situation like this one. Of course I have video!
These are the tines on the rotary hoe. Dad was driving through the field at 11mph which is quite a lot faster than anything else we do.
The hoe folded for transport.
In order to get the hoe off the back wall in the tool shed we had to pull several pieces of equipment out including the grain cart. The forklift makes easy work of this job while making the huge cart quite nimble!
Now What?
Wheat is pollinating right now. Look close and you’ll see the pollen grains on the heads. Although we only have just under 80 acres of wheat it will sure be fun to get the combine out for a bit in a few weeks! Then we’ll plant soybeans right behind wheat harvest if conditions are right. There are a lot of ifs at play, but on paper a wheat and double crop soybean combo can be our most profitable venture. In 2010 and 2011 our double crops soybeans made almost 35bu/A, but planting in the height of the drought last year and then late frost brought us a 2.3 bushel crop. Ouch!
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Is there any difference between the soybeans you will plant later in the wheatfield vs the soybeans you just got done planting?
No. We won’t even clean the planter out before that. We might get a discounted rate on the beans we need.
Do you have to change out screens in your combine for wheat?
The planter tractor and combine share a screen and a GPS receiver. Takes about 5 minutes to swap them.