Planting Progress Week 1

So at least we started planting in April.  Well it was the last day on Monday, but April none the less after the delayed start due to winter's long hold.  It would be a busy week putting in our research plots.  Here is Tim planting a corn fertilizer experiment with our newly enhanced planter with a number of Precision Planting options.

Have you ever seen a seed firmer with lights?  This is the Precision Planting Smart Firmer.  It will give you soil temperature, soil moisture and organic matter.  And it logs it into the planting map so that you can recall the data later to evaluate overall field conditions and correlate that to yield later.  The lights are a nice touch.

 While Tim plants the test plots, Jeff plants all of the production acres.  Now he doesn't have a Smart Firmer, but Jeff is happy with his dark seed firmer I'm sure.

 So I actually did something to help this week.  I mean other than my usual taking pictures and complaining  I actually applied dry fertilizer to test plots.  We compare AgroLiquid against a variety of standards like conventional fertilizers.  Also we are evaluating combination treatments.  We are always fair in establishing plots, as it does no good to cheat.  We have a well built air system for dry fertilizer application.  It is a Gandy box system with a custom built PTO driven turbine.  Very nice.

 This field had a cover crop established last year after wheat harvest that included tillage radish.  You can see the holes they produced as they penetrated deep into the soil to loosen any compaction.  You can also see evenly applied urea.

 We had some terribly strong winds on Friday with gusts over 50 miles per hour.  We rarely get that, and so this old dead tree blew over and created a road block.  I was trapped for hours till the county truck came by with a chain saw.

 Also on Friday we made beds for lettuce again.  Recall in a post from last September how we had all different kinds of lettuce in cooperative variety plots with a grower from Michigan that also is one of the largest lettuce growers in Florida.  Showing the virtues of AgroLiquid fertilizer applied through drip irrigation.  So we will soon be in year 2 testing.

And that was all in a single week.  Planting is progressing well, but plenty more to come.