Farm Friday

[Ian & Val Plagge]

Happy Friday!  This week on the farm we have been spraying different fields, crop and weed scouting, and praying for rain!  We haven't had rain for a few weeks now, so we are hoping for a nice rain fall this weekend.  It is funny to think how at the beginning of the month we were wishing for the rain to stop because it was slowing down our planting pace.  And now we are wanting rain so the crops can grow.  Across the Midwest, drought maps indicate dry conditions to even moderate drought.  To tell you how much we need rain, I had a dream two nights ago about rain...  Now we did get a little bit of rain yesterday, but we are still looking for some more today and over the weekend.  Rain in our area has been very spotty so far this week.

Now to check on my "backyard."

Isn't it neat to see how much the corn grows from week to week.

I've been sharing how to determine the growth stage of corn for the last few Farm Fridays.  Can anyone determine what stage the corn is at this week?

Can you guess what stage of development our corn is at today?

Besides growing corn, we also raise soybeans.  To show you the development of soybeans I'm now going to weekly scout one of our soybean fields, which also happens to be next to our hog buildings.

These soybeans were planted on May 15th, so as you can see, you can just now start to see them coming out from under the ground.  In probably the next week in our area, as you drive across the country-side you'll see more soybeans emerged.

 Soybeans have two developmental stages - vegetative and reproductive.  The vegetative (V) stages are numbered according to how many fully-developed trifoliate leaves are present.  The reproductive (R) stages being at flowering and include pod development, seed development and plant maturation.  The picture below is of one of the soybean plants.  It is in the stage of growth known at VE - Vegetative Emergence.  When you look at the plant you see two large leaves folded out with two more leaves starting to unroll.  The two large leaves are the Cotyledon and the two leaves in the center is the first and only unifoliate leaf.  Following the unifoliate leaf, trifoliate leaves begin to grow from the plant.

VE soybean

Hope you all have a great Memorial Day weekend and that you remember and pay tribute to those that are fighting and have fought and died for our country.

Click Here for more updates on Val's blog.

[Ian & Val Plagge]

Patrick, 

Yes, it has been very dry in our area lately but we're happy to report that we got a good dose of rain last night.  Where we live we actually do not irrigate - are soils keep moisture well enough that we don't need to. To spray we use a sprayer that we pull behind one of our tractors.  (Look at photo below)

[Patrick Mukasa]

Happy Friday Ian and val thanx for sharing.The fields look a bit dry. What method do u use to spray/ irrigate such big fields?