Monday, April 4, 2022
We had a little rain this morning, and after that stopped, John and I took the Gator to several fields to see if it was suitable to apply anhydrous ammonia. Nope. There were small spots that were dry enough, but no field was ready to the tractor and applicator. Yesterday, I had thought that perhaps we could begin with the spryer today to apply some soybean burndown herbicide. Nope. Now that the rain has stopped, the wind is too strong to run the sprayer.
The sun peeks out occasionally this afternoon. It make the wheat look pretty good.
Instead, we have some repairs to make to the old blue ammonia toolbar. The Lett field was not very kind to it last week. There are some stones in the soil there–leftovers from the strip mining that occurred there over 40 years ago. More than a few knives and shanks succumbed to the rocks. So, we will repair that application bar… and when we return to finish the Lett farm, we will use the JD 2510H– it has disk openers that should roll over the stones without breaking anything! This reinforces our thankfulness that in our part of southern Indiana, we have no rocks in the soil (well, only at this farm that is reclaimed strip mine land) like they do in other areas of the corn belt.
More rain is predicted for tomorrow and Wednesday. The temperatures are just too cool, too. I think it is slowing the maturation of the wheat crop. And there has not been enough sunshine and warm temps to dry the soil to allow us to continue applying nitrogen to the planned corn fields. About 20% of the corn acres have had the nitrogen applied. It would not take many days to do the rest, but we gotta have more favorable weather! There will be good days coming, of course, but we are eager to get going. We sure want to begin #plant22 before April rolls right into May.
The wheat crop will get its second application of nitrogen ASAP. A solution of ammonium nitrate will be streamed over the top of the wheat. Blended within the solution will be some boron to address a deficiency identified by sampling the wheat tissue a few days ago. Later as the wheat enters “flag leaf” stage, a second application of fungicide will be applied to protect the developing heads.
The sprayer tender trailer is fully set up now to supply soybean burndown herbicide. All 5 of the bulk storage containers will be utilized to mix each load for the sprayer. No packaged chemicals will be necessary for this application. No plastic jugs to triple-rinse and dispose! John’s winter project is working well.
John’s set-up for the tender trailer. Yes, it has 5 separate totes for blending herbicides and adjuvants.
From another angle, you can see on the left the electrical control box that provides power to the 5 chemical pumps– one each of the totes. There are also lights for evening/night service. And attached to the control box is a solar panel to help recharge the system’s batteries.
On the right is the cone-bottom blending tank, into which the chemicals are measured, blended, and metered into the clean water flow headed to the sprayer.
Brandon is out today delivering corn to market at ADM in Newburgh, Indiana.
Tonight is the final championship game of NCAA basketball. Oh, how I wish our Boilermakers were playing tonight, and that I could be in NOLA to cheer for them in-person! What a glorious experience that would be! We will keep hoping for that to happen some day!
Have a good week.
