Tuesday, April 2, 2013
We brought home the orange 10-wheeler truck this morning… it is loaded with over 500 bushels of soybean seed, the Asgrow AG 3731. These particular seeds are coated with a seed treatment, a fungicide, that will protect the beans. If we are able to plant early (April) the soil can be cooler and wetter at that time of year, therefore, the fungicide allows a higher percentage of the seedlings to thrive. If you peeled back the tarp off the truck box, you’d see it filled with green seeds… the seed treatment coats them with a green color.
We have also placed the field cultivator on the 9330 tractor to be ready to begin working in eroded strips in our fields. We use no-till farming methods almost exclusively which reduce erosion tremendously. However, in small areas if a field has a tiny valley, some water erosion can occur creating a small gully. Using the field cultivator smooths over those small gullies and makes the next operation over the field much smoother. If you want to see what a field cultivator is, go to our YouTube channel and click on “Smoothing tile ridges at Waldo”. We are ready to do some of that as soon as the fields are dry enough to work. We certainly don’t want to go too soon, for if you work the soil wet this time of year, you have coarse, cloddy soil conditions far into the summer… reducing the soils ability to hold moisture, and reducing the ability of the roots of the crop to penetrate into the soil profile.
John has the water truck ready… this is the truck and trailer that supplies water and chemicals to the 4730 sprayer.
We are on the verge of having many field tasks to do. Spraying wheat with herbicides, spraying corn and soybean fields with residual and burn-down herbicides, and applying anhydrous ammonia… the nitrogen source for the corn crop. Then, the planters can run! But we must maintain our flexibility… if the weather delays our field work, then we may have to plant first and apply nitrogen to the standing corn. The weather will decide for us which operation comes next.
It is sunny, but a little cool, this afternoon 53º. The forecast shows 27º tonight, but no more nights below freezing for the next 10 days! The trend in the forecast is good.
Ross and Rhoda returned Sunday evening. They experienced a flat tire on the road Sunday, which delayed their arrival here. They are getting their stuff situated here. Rhoda tells us, “It’s cold!”
Tomorrow morning, we will do a drive-by observation to every field, to determine if we have someplace dry enough to work in ruts with the scratcher, or if it is dry enough to apply NH3. We will discuss the spraying agenda with our crop consultant Greg Anthis, and get a plan in mind for when/how/what in regard to spraying wheat/corn/soybean acres. It won’t be long now until things get very busy around here!
