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.