Done...

What a feeling...as of late afternoon on Friday we wrapped up planting soybeans. We also called it quits on replanting more corn barring any more wild weather. We also covered numerous acres of corn this week with our final post-herbicide applications. This year we are using mostly Bayer products; Capreno and Laudis - these two products allow us to have a planned, one-pass herbicide program. We are also adding Stratego fungicide to our Laudis herbicide in hopes of reducing the anthracnose disease development in our continuous corn. This is our first year of experimenting with this so we have many check-strips planned to see if our investment pays off.

We also made the decision to leave what remains of our Monday, April 18th corn planting over near Chapin. As you may recall, we were chased out of the fields that evening by heavy rains with an extended period of cold weather and more rain which did not help our plant populations. Our stands vary everywhere from 35,000 plants per acre to 22,000 ppa. After repeatedly walking these fields we felt their was just no good way to spot in more seeds without tearing up what we already had out there. Thus, we decided to leave it as is and hope for the best since it is nearing the end of May.

We also made time to get in our last planting of sweetcorn. We have numerous patches of sweetcorn and try to spread out the pollination to ensure that we have a plentiful supply all summer long. Sweetcorn is one of summer's great treats.

Spraying Capreno herbicide on the corn at Williamsville.

A beautiful field of corn as the sun comes up in the hazy distance.

Spotty emergence on our lighter soils in Chapin. The smaller plant will make it, but odds of a competitive yield are not good.

The seeds that did not emerge over at Chapin look like this. Periods of cold and damp weather confuse the plant as it tries to emerge. A thick crust of soil above was even more of a hindrance.