Week ending June 4th...

Looking down the row at one of our 44,000 ppa strips

Early April planted corn - photo taken Monday, corn has grown so fast this week that the rows have now shaded the ground

Owen helping scout the corn

Bob mowing across the road from the shop

More rain and hot weather was the theme of the week. The crops are growing quickly due to the weather as corn is adding a leaf collar a day. The recent warmer weather is helping the crops get "caught up" from April and May's cooler temperatures. However, it also makes the corn brittle and susceptible to greensnap from winds because it is growing so fast. Combine the temperatures with damp field conditions and it makes for small windows to wrap up spraying the final round of herbicides on our corn. We are now down to the last 325 acres and hope to get that checked off our list prior to Thursday's forecasted rains.

Featured above is a picture of one of our 44,000 plants per acre check strips. This year we have multiple replications in different fields of the following planting populations; 35,700, 40,000 and 44,000 ppa. We are trying to test to see if their is a ceiling on plant populations in 30" rows and if we can overcome that barrier by pushing populations even higher. We plan to apply additional nitrogen to these experiments to help compensate for the additional plants the soil will be required to feed in these strips.

On the docket for this week: spraying the last 325 acres of corn, washing and putting away planting machinery, hauling beans from the bins to the IL river, mowing roadbanks, and top-dressing a few fields with urea.