Hello,

I thought I'd post the progress of these two corn plots as the summer goes by. This is our 5th year planting corn, but this year we planted one plot with regular field corn (plus some sweet corn for us) - and the other plot with Roundup Ready Corn & Soybeans. The traditional plot will require mechanical cultivation, and of course we will spray the RR plot.

We planted 5/22/04 - which is about right on time for Central NY.

This is the traditional plot 6/19 - Prior to First Cultivation



and later the same day -after cultivated



You can see that many weeds still remain in the rows with the corn, though cultivating reduces the competition considerably. Around July 4th we will cultivate again, and apply 200 lbs/acre of Urea (46-0-0) by broadcasting it over the corn.

And Dan O. - This is the same field as the Sunflower plot last year - I've seen several volunteer sunflowers, but really not the mass of them I expected. We'll see as the plot matures how many come along.

On the RR plot - I have two "before spraying" pictures - below:

RR Corn - 6/18 - (Sprayed on 6/19)



RR Soybeans - this is about a 1/2 acre strip in between twoacres of corn - (also sprayed 6/19)



I'll get some pictures this weekend to campare the after spraying results. When I was there on 6/25, the weeds were getting very yellow looking but I did not take pictures yet.

I hope you all enjoy the chronology. It should give me a chance to reveiw
my procedures, and hopefully gain a little insight from others.

Thanks
FarmHunter

Round up corn - 2 weeks after round up spray.



It did better than I expected - next to apply 200 lbs/acre 46-0-0 Urea in the next week or two.

Wow, and I thought I had field stone and rocks. I really enjoy your pictures and have followed your advice often. This year my corn is doing very well. Also have some rape, red clover, rye, turnips, beets, pumpkin and sunflower. Are you suggesting that you may go to round up ready and forgo the disc, and cultivator? The last picture looks real good. Is RR corn much more expensive? terry

Hey Terry, its good to hear from you.

My experience with RR corn so far has been real good. I still think Field Prep is important. My cornplanter will not plant well unless the soil is turned over and disked out. I will say that with any corn planting, After disking, if the weeds are gone, do not disk more than needed. You do not want to compact the soil by overworking a plot. Weeds have a tougher time getting started on loose, broken up soil.

I do think that so far after this year - I will forget about the cultivator - and go to RR corn only. The difference to me is amazing so far.

The RR corn was about $120.00 per bag compared to $45-55$ per bag. The Roundup was expensive at $180 per 15 acres though. Still it seems with gas costs, and my time, to be a cheaper and more sure alternative to Manual cultivation - or at least close enough in costs to make it worthwhile.

I will post both field results for others to judge as the summer goes on.

Looks good farm,
Ill take some pics of my beans this weekend and Ill post them on Monday. I sprayed them last week and the weeds are really starting to chlorose now.

farmhunter & lawnfarmer; are you finding that you're corn is short a few heat units this year? In our area we go by the saying "knee high by the 4th of July", but this year is about a foot short of that mark. Other crops (cherries & grapes) are 2 weeks ahead of schedule so this is turning out to be one strange year.

Dan O.

Farmhunter as you know I sell RR corn, Dekalb and Asgrow ( Monsanto) products , it runs about Av3erage $113. a bag and a bag will plant about 3 acres (80,000) units per bag. we plant a little heavier than that, we do about 28,000. But RR is really a no brainer isn't it. You are doing a good job as a promoter for RR seed, My ? is do you harvest those fields are or they just for plots? I thought I had some stony ground but you have me beat, What kind of planter do you use, we have JD 16 row dry boxes. and 2 9750 combines with 8 row head, only 1 head and 2 30 ft grain heads. In those photos you are posting throw in a couple of your camp so I can see your progress, would like to drive up some week end and check it out, will wait for an invite though,, You take care .. Ron

Thanks for all the replies. I hope this post helps others planting corn for deer.

First - yes - the soil is very rocky - limestone flagstones, churt, and some moraine type igneous rocks. We do pick off many of the rocks, anything larger than a Pie-Plate. We do however leave many-many smaller rocks, mostly because we do not harvest the corn - it is strictly for the deer - and the 16 rows of sweetcorn for us.

Dan- yes - our corn is about 6-10" less than maybe it should be. The Growing Days have been short so far - I read that we are 8-10 days behind avg. - Still I'm very pleased with the color of the corn, and the Roundup applications. On my Cultivated Field - we have higher than normal weed growth this year so far. I've put down (last week) a little extra Urea and cultivated it in- the corn looks good in most of that field, I hope it has enough N to produce decent ears with the weed competition - in the rows.

Ron - Thanks - the RR corn is as good as I'd read - I'm very pleased so far. Our corn planter is an old (1970s) IH 4 row planter. I do not know the model#. It works ok - but we have trouble getting parts, and plates. I bought up a bunch of differnet plates for $1 each, we "eyeball" the plates to the seed size. Still - it seems to plant a litte sporadic, and maybe too heavy - but it does a decent job.

We haven't done much work on the cabin lately - here is a picture from Mid June


And another from this past February:


I'm very happy with the cabin. I have made some tree plantings over the last couple years - that about the time of my retirement - should put it nestled in between some spuces, natural regenerated forest (already 30 yrs old), fields, a small cultivated apple orchard, and a sugar maple grove of 30 trees just uphill from the cabin.

We'll see about getting together some time - I read where alot of you got together in the NE Column, I just never seem to have the time.

Take care all,

Sean

The RR plot continues to out perform the Munual Cultivated plot. This year with all the rain, and cool weather - the weeds have been a real problem in the Sweet corn (picture from 7-18-04):



To the left of the sweet corn is about 1.5 acres of feild corn thats doing a little better - but not much. I put down 200 lbs/acre 46-0-0 Urea, Its nice and dark green and about thigh high (so are the weeds). I think it will ear out, but with all the weeds - it will be a poor crop (by farmer's standards).

Here is the 7-18-04 picture of the RR corn:



I had missed some spots in the corn with the one Roundup spraying I did - I resprayed a couple rows by hand - but, really I probably didn't need too. One spraying was enough for the corn - This should be a great 2.5-3 acre corn plot.

Its surprising to some, me included - that the soil in the "weedy plot" is MUCH better that the RR corn plot. In fact, I should ahave taken a picture but did not of the fist 30yds of RR corn I sprayed, where I did not allow enough time for the Roundup to get though the tubes. As a result, I sprayed water only for a little ways (30 yds on 4 rows). The corn in this little section was only about 12" tall, yellow and checked by ragweed. Its hard to believe that the sprayed corn in the picture - is the same planting.

An interesting thing I learned ( or re-learned) was that the innoculant for soybeans IS important. Last year whan I planted Soybeans I did inoculate, and some of the soybeans I planted this year are in the same areas. The 30 yd strip of RR Soybeans I planted in-between the RR corn, is in soil that I did not put the inoculant on - and I forgot this spring to get it.

30 yd strip - No inoculant:



The RR soybeans I planted nearby in the same place as last year's inoculanted soybeans - seem to be Doing better producing their own nitrogen:



I'll probably spray the beans another time, but not the corn - its growing so fast now that I don't think it would make a difference.

Sean I'll tell you another little trick for next year, it looks as if they are 30 in rows, after you plant the beans come back and plant the middles, that would give you 15 in rows what most soybean special planters are now and when the beans come up they will shade out the middles quicker, thus eliminating some weed growth, if you knock a few over spraying they will come back... Ron