So yesterday, on April 20, the NCRS was able to begin planting. It was later than we would have liked, but rain and cold had kept the soil wet. But a warm up enabled planting to begin on one experiment. Tim is planting the different treatments in the experiment. This is a crop that is always planted first at the NCRS. Any guesses?
Here is a look in the furrow. See those orange seeds? (And don't you think orange is a perfect color for a seed? Well it is a treated seed, but still good choice.) It's sugarbeets. Hard to believe that such a big plant grows from such a small seed. Sugarbeetss are the first planted and nearly the last harvested.
Other activities yesterday signaled the start of spring farming. Like Jeff here running the vertical tillage over these corn stalks to prepare for soybean planting.
And the greenhouse has plenty of things growing. There are some experiments that Jacob is running on some of the larger plants. Plus some plants for the upcoming Green Thumb Expo. (More on that later.) And in the flats on the right are a variety of vegetable transplants that will be set in the field in several weeks.
So of course it rained today. But at least we got some seeds in the ground yesterday. So now that we've taken that first step, the rest will be easy.
