Random pictures

WOW, ken , you are right it is interesting how others farm. Last week I took soil temperatures at 2 pm and was amazed on bare black ground temps were 127 degrees F. When i measures under the straw and crop canapy it was 72 degrees F. It was 31 degrees celsius air temp. Also found interesting seeding flax at 25 lb. I always go 58 lbs on ten inch spacing. This year is my second year zero tilling and your right it takes a while before the crop grows out of the stubble. Zero tilling made a huge difference this year thou, but I still do some valley boy farming on my land and noticed fall cultivated  land , is drying out quickly.

Figured I would post some things I am doing,regardless if it is right or wrong. Sometimes there are reasons that need more page space than a quick one sentence statement.

First time growing wheat here in about 35 years aside from some durum. Have to remember the days when you were told when you could sell your crop, how much of it,and then not know how much you will get paid. Dad was very anti-cwb so did all he could to avoid dealing with it. And now I am doing the farming am finally getting a plan in place to work wheat into rotation. So I had 60 ac of barley last year because my supplier sold out of wheat seed that they had booked for me. Barley went in but still had wheat planned for the rotation. So wheat went on last year's flax and 60 ac of that half section that was barley. I had a bad wild Oat problem on about 40 ac of the flax too. So long story short, it opened the door to try Simplicity. I am hoping it has action on barley volunteers since it is not registered for barley. I could never try a grp 2 before because we didn't grow wheat. So this is a trial run. If a guy seeds later you can usually catch the volunteer barley with burn off. That was not the case this year so will be relying on the Simplicity. Pulled off my best barley crop last year so there will certainly be more grain tossed out by the combine last fall than normal. If barley volunteers are controlled then I will try seeding 160 ac of barley stubble to wheat next year. I usually don't use a grassy weed spray in my barley, most years I can get away without it. But this year I did grassy weed on all my cereals (Simplicity- wheat, trondus/axial -barley).

As for flax seeding rate, I mentioned before that I have grown flax with a plant every 3" and still have yield monitor showing 35 BPA going over those areas. Second year growing flax I screwed up on my gear ratio and figured it was going on at 10 lbs/ac. Adjusted it higher when realized tank wasnt going down much after 60 ac. Really never see a yield difference. I have been all over the map with seeding rate on flax but this is actually the highest I have seeded it.The other field I went max rate the tank will put out with the fine auger and that is about 32 lbs ac. Flax stools out, just like most other crops. One tuft of flax plant can have 6 stems on it if spaced far enough from next plant. Flax seed is not terribly expensive so increased rate doesn't cost that much. What it comes down to is do I need to change stuff on my tank to get to +30 lbs/ac? I don't think so. Anywhere in the 15-30 lbs is likely fine.

That gets me to some random thoughts. Dad gets magazine "top crop manager". Ive seen a number of articles of trials where they take the industry wide accepted plant density figure and add 50% or 100% to that and report their yield findings. I would say majority of their articles show very minimal yield gain, sometimes up 10%, a couple occasions a yield drop. What I always found interesting is if you were going to really do a valid study of seeding rates then why would you not run comparisons on the low side too. I have screwed up enough times to find that a reduced seeding rate doesn't seem to cost me. Higher seeding rate in barley helps the crop mature a little faster (I play with that rate enough to get a feel for it) but yield doesn't change much. Yellow mustard I have done side by side at 8 lbs and 14lbs and really no yeild difference- definitely a difference in plant density and size so ease of straight cutting is probably the bigger factor to watch, not so much yield. Peas I do around 3.2 bu/ac. I have run some at 4 bu/ac and I have not sealed the tank lid and run at 2 bu/ac. Yield always not much different. That's how my land seems to respond. I don't mind a bit higher rate but I don't find crazy high rate is of help. For flax, I think anything over 20 lbs is already in the "high"rate for me. Higher seeding rates seem to look better, but yield and weed control don't seem to change.

Soil temps was a couple things on my mind the last week. I have been digging in the dirt and feeling the soil with my hand but each time I forget to take the infra red gun with me. I am kind of curious if a guy could notice something. It is certainly obvious the soil is cooler under the straw mat. What that means in the long run for crop rotation management, straw management or yeild, I don't know. I don't seed with rtk but I can see that if a guy could seed flax perfectly between the rows of barley stubble then that would help get the plants taller, sooner. Will that difference matter when the seed boles are filled and ripening? Probably not.

Brown flax sorrel vs plava.

My neighbor sprayed Moddus on his barley this year and it is (very)short and slow heading out, even though it is the first field he seeded.
What rate did you use, SWMan?
Still hot and dry here too.  Had a couple days of cooler weather over the weekend thankfully.

Surprised that the recommended rate for barley is higher than for wheat with Moddus.

Think it is dry enough here that we will have a natural growth regulator.  That is easy to say after the fact of course.  When the time was correct for spraying growth regulators here everything was still pretty lush.

Interesting on the head length. I have a half pass in the middle of my field where I ran out of chemical and just mixed weed control for, might have to go for a walk and see if there is a difference there.