Corn loves this heat. I drove my pickup truck out into a couple of fields last week to work on irrigation systems – do some welding and replace a water valve – now that corn is waist high. Soybeans finally took off and are getting close to closing in the canopy. I’m done with the first in-crop herbicide application on all fields.
Dancing around the rain
Y drop nitrogen applications have been the priority this week. With the rapid growth, it is time to get the rest of the nitrogen applied before the corn gets too tall for the machine.
We’ve had a pretty good week. Y dropping is dad’s job, and he has been plugging away at it. We’ve been fortunate for the most part as we’ve been dancing around pop-up rain showers. The only time we had to quit early was when a car went off the road during a downpour and took out the utility pole, which kept me from loading the fertilizer truck.
We’re down to the last 250 acres or so. We hope to get most of that knocked out Friday and Saturday, but we are now down to the fields that caught the most rain. We’ve received anywhere from 0.3” to 2.4” this week. It’s all been variable pop-up style showers with no general system-type rain.
We’re also prepping for wheat harvest. I defoliated the fields this week and expect to harvest them next week. I waited as long as I could this week, but Wednesday morning I took the kids that were home, and we swept out a couple of grain bins in preparation for harvest. It was hot, but with three of us it only took 1½ hours.
I’m hoping we don’t have to dry wheat this year, but we will if that means we can get the double crop beans planted a few days earlier. I’m giving the dryer a test run today. We may also have the opportunity to get some hog manure applied to fields, so I’m working through that scenario as well.
Stay cool out there!