Happy spring! #Plant20 wrapped up on our farm this week, just before the first wave of rain that arrived late this week. We are way ahead of schedule this year compared to last year (our first day of planting last year was May 17, with most of the planting happening during the first week of June – learn more about that here), but reality is that this year, we’re pretty close to average.
I hosted a #FollowtheField series on the blog last year, but this year’s series looks a bit different because I’m following *my* field – that’s right: I’m farming for real! (Disclaimer: we’ll also be following another field so I can share with you the soybean perspective since my field is corn).
How this will work:
- We’ll be following two fields on our farm this year – one corn, one soybean. Our farm is located in Central Illinois, just west of Bloomington. We farm about 500 acres of corn and soybeans, which is roughly 10 fields of various sizes.
- I’ll share weekly updates on Fridays, including lots of photos and a written description of what happened that week and what you’re seeing in the field. I also like to include visuals (ruler/yard stick) so you can see the crop’s growth progress).
- You follow along on the blog (here) or on my social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)!
So without further delay, here’s your first of the weekly #FollowtheField updates for 2020!
May 15, 2020 Update:
Soybeans (23 days)
This soybean field was planted on April 22, which happened to be Earth Day. We planted all of the soybeans on our farm first this year. Historically, farmers have planted corn before soybeans in this area, but research shows that soybeans have better growth and better yields if planted in mid- to late-April. The soil temperatures and air temperatures were just a bit too low during this time for corn anyway, and it worked out that our soybean fields were fit to plant (i.e. not too wet) first.
This field was corn last year, and last fall after the corn crop was harvested, we planted cover crops. This particular cover crop, which you can see in the photo, is cereal rye. Cereal rye germinates in the fall, goes dormant over the winter, and then takes off in the spring. We like planting a cereal rye cover crop before a soybean crop because the roots help hold the soil in place during spring rains. The residue you see in the below photo is all cornstalks left from last harvest. They tend to break down more slowly when you don’t do any tillage (which we didn’t, so this field would be considered no-till, along with all of our fields this year), so we still have lots covering the ground. And this is okay – it provides extra soil cover, which is good!
As you can see in the top soybean photo and the photo below, the soybeans are finally just beginning to emerge. Soybeans generally take about 10 days or so to emerge, but the weather was cool the last couple of weeks in April and first couple of weeks in May, which delayed their progress. This photo was taken on May 13, so the day before the weather finally started warming up to the upper 60s and 70s consistently during the day here in Central Illinois. As you can see, the bean seedlings are just beginning to break through the ground.
This week, on May 12 to be exact, we had the soybean field sprayed with a herbicide. Soybeans can’t compete very well with weeds while they’re so little and weeds can take advantage of the nutrients in the ground and the sunlight and get far ahead of the soybeans and cause problems in the field. We definitely don’t want the weeds to mature and go to seed since that means even MORE weeds (up to hundreds of thousands of seeds per plant) later. We also needed to kill the cereal rye cover crop in the field so that it wouldn’t compete with the soybeans. We “planted green” and left the cover crop alive until we knew the soybeans would be germinating to make sure we didn’t leave an empty field for a couple of weeks. We also were able to reduce the number of times we needed someone to apply a herbicide in the field by leaving the cover crop alive – otherwise, we would have sprayed to kill the cover crop before planting, then came back and sprayed again about two weeks after planting to take care of the weeds.
Corn (2 days)
This field – MY field – was planted this week, on May 13. Most of my field is actually a plot, or twelve rows each of various corn hybrids to test to see how well each performs in this field. This includes different brands and different corn hybrids (or varieties) of the same brand. Our corn planter is twelve rows wide, which is why we have twelve rows of each hybrid in the plot.
There’s not much to talk about with what’s happening to the corn right now – hopefully it all got a nice drink yesterday and is working on germinating.
We had the field sprayed before we planted to kill any weeds, but we also added nitrogen fertilizer to help the corn grow. Last fall, more nutrients – phosphorus, potassium, and sulfur – were applied to make sure that the soil would have enough nutrients for the corn to grow. This is common practice. We use soil samples to determine just how much of each nutrient needs to be applied and then we have it applied. I also had some barley planted in the back third of the field (towards the round corn crib) as a cover crop. This field tends to be wet, so we hope that by planting a cover crop, we can improve water infiltration and reduce the amount of water moving on the surface and potentially eroding the soil. During planting, we also use an insecticide around the field border, specifically targeting corn rootworms. The idea is that by putting the insecticide only around the field border, we reduce the number of rootworm moths coming over from last year’s corn fields and also don’t have to apply the insecticide in all of the field. The corn is also bred to protect itself from rootworms – you can read more about that here. Rootworms are a bad problem to have in corn.
Something exciting that I’ve been talking about over on social media is that this is the first year I’ve ever planted all by myself (i.e. nobody else present in the cab of the tractor to tell me everything I’m doing wrong). It’s exciting and nerve-racking all at once to be responsible for equipment that large and expensive, seed that costs quite a bit (I paid a little over $100 per acre for my non-plot seed), and the fact that we’ll look at all of my errors all summer long until harvest. But it’s fun and exciting and I know I still have a lot to learn, but this is a start!
Here’s an over-the-shoulder shot of our planter. This is a split-row planter, so we can use it for both corn and soybeans. We plant corn in 30-inch rows and soybeans in 15-inch rows. If you look closely, you can see that the boxes in the front (which hold the seed before it’s planted) are offset from the boxes in the back row. Only the boxes in the back row plant when we plant corn, but we have all 23 boxes running when we plant soybeans.
And here’s a fun shot of the toolbox on our planter. It would be really annoying to not be carrying tools with you at all times, especially when you break down in the middle of the field and only need a wrench to fix the problem and get moving again, so that’s why it’s here. Would you expect there to be a coffee can included? They’re actually extremely useful on the farm. They’re great at holding things and for scooping corn or soybean seed to redivide among the boxes when they’re running low or for when you’re planting plots. Our only wish is that Folgers (or other coffee companies) would bring back the more durable metal cans! 😉
And here’s a sunset photo of me driving the tractor that my dad took the other night while planting corn.
I’ll be back with update #2 next week!
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