My pictures are a little big - so I provided links for most of them - so you all do not have to wait for them to load.


The " Sunflower plot" started our as a corn field this spring - the sunflower seeds were Black-Oil Seeds for birds. I bought like 5 lbs of seed and mixed it in with 40 lbs of corn seed - mostly because the planter was planting the corn too close(small seed for my plates) - so I got the " Bright Idea" of cutting it with a cheap seed. As it turned out - the spring was VERY wet and cold - we had a frost and an extended wet period right after planting, and I lost 90% of the corn. BUT the sunflowers flourished. - So much so that the corn probably would have had a tough time competing with the sunflowers - in the future I would not plant so many seeds with the corn! The sunflowers stand about shoulder high.

The planting was originally a 3 acre planting. In mid June, I re-disked up a little more than 1 acre of it and planted what corn I had left. I left the rest in sunflowers.

The sunflowers are just now opening up - and there is some corn mixed in (not much). The replanted corn is coming on now, a bit weedy - but We' ll have at least some corn - and it' ll be very interesting to see if the sunflowers offer cover and or food for the deer. I ended up mixing in some soybeans - and while you cannot see them in the corn pictures (last picture) - the deer know they are there.

http://images.andale.com/f2/115/106/...se2___2003.jpg

http://images.andale.com/f2/115/106/...ose_1_2003.jpg

http://images.andale.com/f2/115/106/...s_8_3_2003.jpg

Replanted corn on 8/3 - planted in late June:

http://images.andale.com/f2/115/106/..._corn_2003.jpg

The other corn fields are VERY Spotty, and the weeds are very bad - even with cultivation - I' ll post " the weedy corn plot" soon.