Windy day

This old wet holding bin hadn't been moved for 3 years and never bothered with all the storms and wind, until yesterday.

Harvest time

Everything is ready to roll. Hope to do 40-50 acres today to get a good feel for moisture and yield in a few different fields. Top image is my dryer setup, bottom is my fields north of my house (DK 49-35RR).

Fields of Gold...again

This picture is from the field south of my house. It is Agrigold 6309 SmartStax. The plant health looks great with just a few blemishes on the leaves. Four ears averaged 19.5 kernals around, 32.5 kernals long, and roughly 31,000 plants per acre. Doing the calculations would put me close to 210 bu/acre. I would be very happy with a yield like that as that would be the best yield ever on this farm by about ten bushels.

Beautiful Beans

Stopped to check on my beans yesterday. I was very impressed how they have been handling the excess moisture and now the heat. The rows were not quite shaded, but that is normal with this variety (NK S21-N6). The plants were already setting quite a few pods...(6-12 each)...which also surprised me.

Fields of Gold

Here are a couple of pics from this am. One shows the field south of my house. Fully tasseled and pretty much completely pollinated. The other pic shows an ear from that field. Looking at the ear it looks like pollination went great, about 38 kernels long and 18 rows around....final stand in this field was around 31,750. It is important that the roots find plenty of nitrogen and water during the filling stage or else the plant will cannibalize the stalk and abort kernel, which can hurt yield severely.

I should also mention that in the field picture, the corn close to the house is a different hybrid than the corn further away.....that is the reason for the color change (tassels).

Nice videos on Ag Reports Network

There are a few nice videos on the website from the past week.

http://www.agreportsnetwork.com/cms/north-america

Click on each farmers tack to view individual videos, or click the yellow box on the left-hand side to open the "Latest Video Report"

I have a busy day of shingling planned, and will have a new video tomorrow.

Talk about a down pour!

This is my driveway, has approximately 160 acres drains under it....most the time. The two 24" culverts could not keep up this morning.

SmartStax may be the real deal

On the left is a root ball from Agrigold 6309 Smart Stack variety, on the right is a root ball from Dekalb 52-59 VT3. Although overall root mass seems similar, what was surprising for me is the finer root hairs. The finer root hairs to me means better root growth, which means better nutrient uptake, which means better yields come fall. I have high hopes for my Smart Stacks corn.

And the thunder rolls

Video quality doesn't do this clip justice....it was one heck of a light show last night. Sound quality is good and pretty cool, neat to listen to. A little wind damage to the corn, but nothing major for my area. Ended up with 1.6 inches of rain.

Finished up side-dressing yesterday

Corn is looking great....and now with the rest of the nitrogen on, it will really take off. Now I need to focus on spraying. As the corn is getting tall the weeds are really getting tall. Who would have guesses we would go from three weeks of dryness, to one week of rain. We are expected to get rain again tonight (1/2 to 3/4 of an inch). But from now on I will not turn down rain, because as the crop growth rate picks up the need for water and nutrients also picks up.

Nothing beats a great wife that is a great chef!

Not trying to be cheesy, my wife made a great meal for supper tonight. For starters fresh ciabatte bread with fresh sliced tomato and fresh mozzarella cheese. Main course was crab alfredo topped with fresh tomato. Yeah, it was great.

Video of corn last Friday

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid59581367001

Good dog

Corn looking nice. I am still working on getting my side-dressing done.....between rains that is. I had some spots that were knee high by the fourth of June, but now a week later I would say the majority of my corn is knee high.

New video coming later today.



Here is a picture of my rainy day project. I am making up a 20 foot boom for spraying fencelines, end rows, ditches, and lawns. The new tank is 100 gallon vs. my old sprayer was only 25 gallon. Hopefully I will be able to get more done this way.

Side dressing Nitrogen

Corn is getting to tall to pick rock anymore, so here is a picture of the final pile for the spring.


Next I need to focus on getting the rest of my nitrogen on. To do this I am sidedressing 28%. I have to do this on 370 of my 570 acres. The rest got fall applied anhydrous (it wasn't working very well last fall due to the massive amount of trash, so I gave up after 200 acres). Sidedressing is a great way to give a corn plant a boost of nitrogen right when the plant is growing the most, and also the split application helps reduce leeching of nitrogen.

Pond project

My parents have been working on a weekend "cabin". They live about an hour away, and this will give them a place to stay a little closer to the farm I live on, and my dad grew up on. For the last two weeks the pond has been being dug, and as of 2 pm yesterday, it is officially filling.

More corn pics

Thing have progressed nicely over the weekend. A lot of nice heat, a tenth of an inch of rain, and more rain and heat in the forecast for this week. I would be willing to bet I will have some corn knee high by the fourth of June (something that hasn't happened in quite a while). Maybe not entire fields, but parts of some.

May two pics today show the corn planted April 15th. It is my worst looking field due to the troubles it had overcoming the frost damage. Most of my other fields are around six leaf stage and range from 8-12 inches tall. Corn can really begin to grow fast at this stage. The rest of my fields look very uniform.

Seed Solutions Group

The Seed Solutions Group has been doing some very informative videos on our website. They include: staging corn and soybeans, black cutworm alert, measuring corn and soybean populations, and many others.

See their player at http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid77883851001

Looking good

Corn has really taken off this week. Temperatures are ideal for corn with highs in the mid 80's and lows around 60. This is ideal because corn becomes dormant with temperatures over 86 Fahrenheit and under 60 Fahrenheit. So you can literally say corn is growing 24 hours a day this week with plenty of sub soil moisture.

Still Tangled...and looking a bit uneven

Click on picture to enlarge it.

Packing Silage

I helped my neighbors do some custom chopping, I did not get video of the chopper, but will next time. I love to see their 4wd pack silage, and it makes for a fun ride too.

Can row the corn again,

Though the the new corn leaves have still not been able untangle themselves from the dead tissue, the weather looks good for corn to keep growing, and that hopefully should help.

New Frost Follow-up Video

To view the video go to http://www.agreportsnetwork.com/cms/north-america Find Kyle Wendland in Northeast Iowa, and click the tack.


To see other videos from farmers around the U.S. please visit http://www.agreportsnetwork.com/cms/

Grow baby Grow!

At last, a huge relief. I can finally see for certain that the plants are back growing as normal. No signs of any odd diseases showing up yet, leaves being tangled is not a big concern, and a good forecast ahead means it is off to the races.

Finally...SUN!

Been way too long since we saw the sun in my area. Now we need some heat and we will see how much of this corn comes out of its current stage. It continues to look ugly, but if you look close you can see a glimmer of green hope.


This final picture shows some good, firm, green tissue which means the plant is very much still alive. With the sunny and warmer days ahead the corn should continue to grow as normal, though I am sure I will lose a certain percentage of my corn, it looks like it will be a very small percentage.

Enough already!

I am definitely ready for the weather to be 80 and sunny!

1.9 inches in the last 12 hours. No progress showing on my corn yet.

yeah...Hail...

Nothing major...no damage....ranged in size from pea size to marble sized.

Beans

Looked at my beans, and it appears some were up, but most were not. The beans that were up look a little nipped around the edges, and a couple had new leaves sticking out. They still look green, and suspect permanent damage to be minimal.

Corn looking pretty pathetic as the day progresses

Picture of Iowa frost damaged corn.

Anatomy of a corn plant

This first picture simply shows the way a corn plant emerges from its seed. Tap root first and then the shoot. The growing point slowly moves upward as the shoots grows up. All of a corn plants leaves extend from the growing point.


This picture shows the portion of the plant that was protected from the frost by the soil. The red part of the bottom leaf was exposed, but the white parts is plant tissue that was not exposed and therefore did not get frosted. The reason it is white is because it was not exposed to sunlight and did not activate the chlorophyll. The growing point is in the center of the plant where my finger is pointing.
This is the plant after tearing off the dead tissue. You can see that some of the tissue, even though it was above ground, was protected by the outer leaf and did not get killed off. After seeing this I am a lot less worried about my corn coming back from this frost damage.

Videos of Frosted corn from last year

Seems very similar to last years late frost for me here in NE Iowa (45 miles north of Waterloo ) link to video done last night http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid76904907001 Link to video 5-16-09 (last years frost damage) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNsZa7sMlmA&NR=1 Follow up video ten days after frost damage occured http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lKJvrUzmKY This years frost (for me) seems a little more serious, but after digging up numerous plants growing points have not been effected and any tissue that was at or below the soil level was protected by the soil temps (49 F). I think it would help bring the new growth through faster if we had some sunny and warmer weather coming, but time will tell. Hope everyone else's corn comes through well.

A Bit Nippy

It got a a little too chilly Saturday night for these corn plants. 100% of my corn was emerged, and 75-90% of the corn got nipped pretty hard here in NE Iowa. This is very similar to last years May 15 frost, and therefore I am not worried yet. It is not a good feeling to see your young, vigorous corn get killed off, but there is nothing I can do but wait and see how it comes out of it. Generally, the dead tissue tangles the new growth up a little, but nothing serious.

Video coming later today @ http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid76904907001

Are They Serious?

This is starting to sound more serious than I thought.

New Video

I did a new video yesterday morning. I tried not to be long winded, but tried to get some good info in there. I explained a little about the frost in Iowa that we had last May and how it effects a corn plant.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid76904907001



We are trying something new. This player is set up to have the newest videos always on it, this way you do not have to search for which people have done new videos each week.

Let me know your thoughts.

Almost Famous

Ok, so its not the Wall Street journal, but this article was on the bottom half of the front page of this weeks AgriNews.

http://www.agrinews.com/wendland/finishes/beans/before/rain/comes/story-2482.html

Picking rocks

My least favorite pass time this time of year...

Corn Pic

You can tell its windy, but without the wind today the plant would be as tall as the pen ....4".

New Workhorse

I bought this yesterday.....for picking rock.....and also working around the yard.......and I might play around with it a little.

New crop pics...and hopefully a video coming tomorrow morning. (I have been having camcorder troubles)..sorry.