Cultivation Of Crops

Mar 2, 2015

Meteorological Spring - Passing of the Seasons

This is looking south toward the Litchfield weigh station on I-55. It is a view of the prairie between I-55 and old Route 66. While today represents meteorological spring, It looks pretty wintery. I finally decided on this site for my passing of the season photos this year. Some of the prairie is restored and some is native. IDOT messed it up somewhat by cleaning out the ditch running through it.

March 1st - Spring Flowers and Dr. Hortfreud

Ah yes, the blooms of early spring. It's time for them to appear, now that it's March 1st.

In this first picture, the snowdrops are making their appearance, but it is under the cover of snow.

They are like little nodding bells, ringing in the spring, though currently, with the March 1st snowfall, their nodding bells have been nearly silenced, perhaps even crushed.

Only the most well-trained

Feb 28, 2015

Garden fairies discuss the end of winter

fairies Humor winter

Garden fairies here.

We are garden fairies and we have decided to post on this blog to talk about the weather and in particular the end of winter.

Is winter ever going to end? We ask ourselves this over and over. Just a few weeks ago it seemed like the question was if winter was ever going to get started because it really wasn't all that bad and it hadn't snowed that much.

Then all of a

Soil Fertility P and K

Nutrient Management soil fertility

I attended a soil fertility seminar sponsored by Extension Service yesterday. It was a telenet conference and well attended. The presenters all gave science based, research data supported presentations.

Dr. Fabian Fernandez of University of Minnesota started the day discussing application rates and methods for Phosphorous and Potassium. He discussed the merits of banding vs. broadcast placement of fertilizer and how to soil sample in banded fields. While I don't recall him saying it flat out, he advocated for multiple cores per sample.

He had research to support his saying that there is little difference in banding vs broadcast. In one study he found that tillage method made a bigger difference than fertilizer placement. Strip till did better than No-till. He also said that you shoould not skimp on rate even if you band fertilizer.

He told us that we should avoid shortcuts when taking soil samples and use our soil test information to manage our P and K.

Feb 27, 2015

Striking in Brazil

A trucker strike in Brazil has affected the movement of commodities such as soybeans and poultry and has slightly affected markets with the possibility of greater consequences if the strike continues. I encourage you to look over the article Brazilian Trucker Strike from Ag Web then discuss with others the impact this has on Brazil, the United States, and other countries around the world.

Weather Outlook

weather

The big question at this time of year is whether or not we will have enough moisture to have another great crop year. I know nothing about making those types of predictions except that we seldom string together 2 great years much less three. A ProFarmer article quotes National Weather Service as predicting a drought in Minnesota and the Dakotas.