Planting corn on highly erodible soils using the conservation practice of strip-till where the only tillage for this year's corn crop is from last fall's strip-till bar. 
Finishing the field just ahead of a powerful thunderstorm A sporadic week of corn planting. We dodged of lot of the heavier rains in the beginning of the week which allowed us to get back in the fields on Wednesday afternoon and plant through Thursday. Thursday evening a light shower kept us out until Friday afternoon. We were only able to get in 45 minutes of planting on Friday before the really strong thunderstorms rolled in and pounded us with rain. Most farms received anywhere from six tenths of an inch to right around an inch. These storms also brought with them cooler temperatures which will imped our soils ability to dry out so we can get back in the fields. Earlier in the week it was dry enough to begin spraying herbicides on a few of our fields. We originally intended to wait and spray the corn with a one-pass herbicide program, but the warmer temperatures of last week brought the weeds out; specifically henbit and chick-weed which if ignored will choke out any corn seedlings robbing them of water and nutrients. We also played around with our new ditcher. We have never owned one of these before, but because of last year's wet fields we decided to purchase one. Our goal was to create ditches on a few of our traditionally wet fields before the rains fell in hopes of getting the water off the field and into the nearby road ditch. It was quite a sight to see us throwing dirt 40-50' in the air while we ditched - I will have to get pictures of this as I forgot to bring along the camera that day.
We are not quite 45% completed with our 2011 corn planting and with the wetter and cooler forecast ahead I hope we don't have to go back and replant any of that which we already planted...
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