Memorial Day Weekend...

Another hot and dry week here in Central Illinois.  Last week we top-dressed a couple fields of corn with urea to put the finishing touches on our nitrogen program.  Hopefully, it will rain soon and the urea will be able to be moved into the soil profile and near the corn's roots.  Otherwise, it is a wasted investment.  As you can see from one of the pictures below, the urea can sometimes burn the leaf margins of the corn.  This is generally caused by the nitrogen "dust" that comes with using urea.

We also finsihed spraying our corn with the last of the two-pass herbicide program.  As the weather has warmed up the weeds are becoming harder to kill as they focus on conserving moisture and growing through the heat.  We use additives in our herbicides to breakdown the weed's cuticle (leaf's outside waxy coating) which help to get the weeds to absorb the chemicals faster; even through hot weather. 

It needs to rain here soon...

 Top-dressing Urea nitrogen on corn near Ashland last weekend

Urea prills spread on the ground waiting on a rain 

Leaf burn from the Urea applications 

Loading the sprayer 

Spraying corn in Williamsville