We took advantage of the warm spell on April 15-17 to plant about half of our corn crop. Seed bed conditions were ideal and we were able to get in 3 good days of planting with a couple of days of warmth following to get germination off to a good start. Pictured is a sprout on 4/20 in corn planted on 4/15.  The cold weather and cold rain in the forecast this past week caused us to do very little planting. Instead, we focused on getting our preplant bean herbicide applied before the rain this weekend. The picture shows us spraying the old, bright-yellow, herbicide “Prowl” on our nonGMO bean acres. The nonGMO beans require extra preplant weed protection to compensate for the lack of effective post-emerge options. With fields drying off quickly and a great weather forecast for the week, we hope to resume planting early this week and hopefully roll right into planting beans once corn is finished.

We have been using our 360 SoilScan to monitor the conversion to nitrate of our fall applied ammonia and to try to begin to get a grasp on nitrate levels in the fields to help us make better informed decisions at sidedress (Y-Drop) time.

And, of course, we had to get in some pictures of the kids enjoying rides in the tractors whenever possible!