Rain

Forget the protests, we got rain! I wonder how many million farmers would like what I have right now? I just got my rain report from Bill Northcutt at Spatial Rain Consulting and we got .81 inches here last night and it is raining this morning! It couldn't come at a better time!

Rain is better than tillage but they both hide a lot of flaws in the field. I was embarrassed to have to young agronomists "in that old fella's field" yesterday because it has symptoms of just about every problem a corn stand can have.

spots with no corn
poor stand with 3 sizes of plants in the same row
excellent stand
cold inhibition
pythium
seed treatment washing off the seed
good root development and poor in the same row
cover crop that never got killed
wireworm
cutworm
armyworm
grass weeds
broadleafs including perennials

The list is long than that. The worst is the clay knob right outside the patio we love to sit at. This is my best field, my show field that "everyone and his brother" drives by. None of the problems are bad enough to cause a failure but they are all there. My out of sync with nature blog explains the whole thing but there is a little more to it than that.

This morning I don't care as much about these things because it got a rain after a powerful herbicide application yesterday. What I put on is enough to kill the sickly plants but the good plants wouldn't have a chance if I didn't control the weeds.

Now if I can get it side dressed next week with nitrogen, ammonium thiosulfate and corn syrup, I can send this funny field to maturity and see how bad I really did in October. It's all history in the making right now and all I can do is try to do better next year.

I am already planning to seed cereal rye in it again for a soybean crop next year. I am not going to plant wheat after corn because even though I can do it and have done it, it complicates things. Wheat would work better for me with early beans taken off in September so the notill wheat would get a better start.

I could go back to corn but I have never had second year corn beat first year corn. This would be the time because I think there is no way I could start off worse next year than I did this year! I better not say that because I might make that happen!

Today I give thanks for rain so many farmers across this country and around the world would trade for. We weren't even that desperate for a rain, rain just makes things work better.

Every farmer wants rain until they get too much! At least I got the "resistant weed message" unlike the fellow in the picture!

Ed