Instead of writing about decisions, I should have been making them! I noticed my volunteer and cover crop wheat has jointed and I should have my burn down on. It hit me that this early spring has everything far advanced and I should be taking my own advice. Make some decisions!Wheat is hard to kill after it's jointed. One year it took a lot more glyphosate to kill it than I wanted and now I am trying to not use glyphosate on it so my burn down should have went on yesterday and even that might be late for the big stuff. I saw a piece that the cherry blossoms in DC are a month ahead of some years and the park ranger noted that since the trees were planted 100 years ago the average bloom date has increased 5 days earlier than they used to be.
CBS showed the park ranger, Bill Line, walking with the reporter and LuAnn exclaims "that's the guy who helped me find those books hidden in boxes for the grand children!" Of course the liberal media was trying to tie the story to global warming. Most people I know think this early year is due to cycles that were set in motion thousands or millions of years ago.
The calendar also snuck up on me. Today is the first day of spring! Happy spring, everyone! It's time to stand an egg on end without it falling over, just like we will be able to do July 20.
With the summer like temperatures, nature is advancing quickly. The little bit of wheat in Ohio has jointed on its way to an early harvest once more. That has implications to us no-till cover croppers to get our cover crops killed in preparation of planting. I wouldn't be surprised to see the best corn and beans yields happen in March this year unless we get a really cold, hard weather spell at a critical time in its development. Our highest corn yield was March 30 and 31 of 1999, and this year looks like it could do the same thing. I just hope we don't have the drought in southwest Ohio we had that year, and the weather patterns looks like we won't.
There is a big storm in the south central part of the United States and I have friends who won't plant until it is past. Those who have planted are concerned of flooding.
It's time to use yesterday's blog and make some decisions. My intuition says I am right. If my intuition is wrong, it's easier to forgive myself. If I act on impulse because everyone else is spraying or whatever and it is wrong, it is easier to be hard on myself. My wheat plants say I am right!
Ed
"Corn planting is underway in Ohio. Farmers in the Dayton area were planting corn this afternoon. I don’t mean just one farmer; I am talking about many corn planters were rolling. The University of Illinois agronomist, Emerson Nafziger, reported today he has never seen Illinois farmers plant so much corn this early. He went on to add that there is no evidence to support that planting corn prior to the end of March or early April will increase the yield and the risk in planting now may actually outweigh the gain."
ReplyDeleteTo those who complain that farming is not fun:
ReplyDeleteHigh concentration of uranium in ferlilizer used in Germany:
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120320-41435.html
It seems to happen in the U.S. too, uranium is naturally present in many mined phosphate deposits all over the world, like in the phosphates from Florida or the phosphogypsum waste stacks.
Uranium leaching into water has apparently been reported in the southeast tobacco farms, although it might just as well have come from the multiple phosphate mining operations in the region.
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/fertilizer.html
Where does your gypsum come from, Ed?