Shoots, We Have Shoots!

I was hoping I would find these this morning, and I did! That's a May Day present as nice as homemade basket of flowers hanging on the doorknob! We have baby corn shoots emerging from planting two weeks ago tonight. For the cool temperatures we have had, that is pretty good. Corn planted a week before that is no farther along in most places.

My little picture shows every blemish, the melting clods, the dying weeds and even a rock in the foreground. That's a problem with ripping, it brings up loose rocks. I have more soil disturbance than I would like but the new corn will soon anchor the soil in place. We just had too much hydraulic compaction in this long term no-till field behind the house after the record rain events since the fall of 2010. 80 inches of water is massive tonnage per square foot.

The spacing is good, less than 7 inches for 32,000 plants per acre in 30 inch rows. That shows you how much this picture is magnified because it looks farther than that between plants. The emergence is what I am looking for. We need all the plants to emerge at the same time as much as possible. I would like them all up in 24 hours and 48 hours at the max. Anything beyond that and the corn plant tends to become a weed with a smaller ear or no ear at all.

If all my corn comes up like this, I will be very happy. Now I have to start scouting for insects as cut worms and army worms are being reported with patches of wire worm and sod grub worms and web worms. I probably need to add more insecide to my post herbicide spray or I may not. I need to get the control down with the seed and I think I have done that. I rarely spray corn twice but I am really trying to get ahead of these resistant and reoccuring weeds. Fall panicum and other weeds have cost me yield before. I won't know until I scout and IPM says I only use the pesticide I need to save money and protect the environment.

So that's good news today. There is lots of ag news like the record corn purchase by China, the government backing off the teen labor farm law, and record planting pace(which is stalled in the east as we speak.)

I caught this interesting thread on Machinery Talk about rebuilt transmission and engines.

Have a great day,

Ed