Monday, May 24, 2010

Hot and Busy at the NCRS

Well remember last week when I was complaining about how cold it was? Be careful what you wish for, as today it was in the upper 80's. Now this is no big deal to Southerners as I've been laughed at in Alabama for sweating once. But coming off 50 degrees, it is quite a change. But it is good for the corn and soybeans. I was worried about our soybeans, but now they are really coming up. Everyone was busy today. One thing I did was make some late N foliar applications to wheat. The wheat has heads emerging now. So with the cold and wet weather that we have had, I combined some N products with fungicide. We are testing High NRG-NR and ferti-Rain and a competitive N. Here is a picture from my Hagie plot sprayer. We established spray tram lines when we planted. It was a great morning for spraying. We have had some good and some no effect results with this type of application in the past. So we have these plots and others around the country to get a handle on performance and have confidence in recommendations.Taskmaster Brian Levene had his crew again setting transplants in the vegetable plots. They are really making headway in getting these plots set up. Lots of bending over though. I would rather be the photographer.
We had two soybean experiments to plant today. Here are Phil and Doug loading the drill. Notice the soybean innoculant dripping into the soybeans going into the auger. This is the first year we have used bulk soybeans.

Doug and Stephanie put out the soybean plots on new Farm 7. Finished planting plot soybeans today. It evidently is a good sign with the Heavenly light guiding Doug through the field.

Finally here is Ron Davis working on a project to make our lives easier, which is the purpose of many of the projects here. I will unveil it in a future post after it passes our testing phase.

So things are going pretty well so far. I am off on a fertilizer mission for a few days. I will keep our followers posted on any news of note. Thanks for reading.