Finished planting corn.

[wolc123]

I finished my last 2 acres of RR corn today, along with a little more 80 day sweetcorn (bodacious), and some 90 day (silver queen).  No trouble with the planter today.  

Good thing my other old tractor is down with a flat rear tire, because the canopy on this one was nice in the full sun today.  The loader bucket is also handy for carrying extra seed and fertilizer.

I am hoping today's batches of sweetcorn gives us some for the freezer.  It all depends on whether or not I can take out enough coons when the 70 and 80 day stuff I planted 2 weeks ago gets ripe.

As long as the weather cooperates with enough rain this summer, the RR corn ought to pay off in venison, during the Holiday ML season this year.

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by wolc123

[G-Man]

Got mine in last week thankfully.before the fri sat rain..

[stubborn1VT]

I broadcasted my little patch on Friday.  Next year I think I'm going to look into an Earthway row seeder. 

Also hoping to plant my little test strips of grain sorghum (milo) tomorrow before it gets too hot.  Then I will be done until August when I plant the rest of my plot into brassicas, as well as a strip of new clover with oats as a nurse crop.

[wolc123]

2 hours ago, stubborn1VT said:

I broadcasted my little patch on Friday.  Next year I think I'm going to look into an Earthway row seeder. 

Also hoping to plant my little test strips of grain sorghum (milo) tomorrow before it gets too hot.  Then I will be done until August when I plant the rest of my plot into brassicas, as well as a strip of new clover with oats as a nurse crop.

I left a little spot for a purple top turnip / radish mix, between that sweetcorn and the RR corn.  I also left a little spot for that mix behind my other 2 acres of RR corn plot, that I planted the week before Memorial day.  There is just something about a mix of standing corn and frozen brassicas that is irresistible to deer in mid to late December.

I used up almost all of my fertilizer (triple 15) on today's planting, so I will need to pick up another 50 pound bag or two, prior to those August plantings.  I hsvr my best luck with brassicss when I seef light and fertilize heavy. 

I will also need a bushel of wheat and about 10 pounds of white clover for September plantings on the 4 acres that I had in corn and turnips last year.  Rihnharts in Middleport has all that stuff dirt cheap.

[wolc123]

1 hour ago, blackbeltbill said:

With those plantings and Food Plots- the Biggest Trophy Buck should be a easy Slam Dunk from the Deer Clubhouse.

 Be waiting to see the Pics come Fall.

 

I will be thankful if I see some deer of any size,  in the later part of the season.  I am really looking forward to the Holiday ML season this year.

I have yet to take an antlered buck during the late ML season. I did manage to bless my wife with one of her favorites (a fat button buck) from my bedroom window, around 15 years ago.

That was one of my most memorable hunts of all time.  I rushed home from work, just in time to catch the last 5 minutes of legal daylight, on the last day.  There was a little turnip plot, next to some standing corn, 100 yards out back.

Still in my work clothes, I glassed the corn and watched the dark form of the young buck stand up in the corn and move towards the turnips.  He cleared the edge of the corn, with 2 minutes to go. 

I pushed up the window, capped my scoped inline ML, and dropped him there in his tracks.  His second helping of turnip greens was still in his lips when I drove that John Deere loader tractor out there to fetch him.  

The crop rotation has worked out such that my corn and turnip plots are in almost the same spot this year.  I would be very thankful for another button buck, and my wife even more so.  Those are the "real" trophies for her and I.  Their eating quality is in a whole other league than those trophy antlered bucks. 

[wolc123]

I cultivated and sprayed my back 2 acre RR corn plot, and cultivated my first 1/2  acre of sweet corn this afternoon.  I could not spray that because it is not RR.  Maybe I can coax the kids out there with hoes.  All of that was planted the week before Memorial day, and it is up about a foot now.  

This tractor worked ok for row crop work.  I was afraid the back tires would be too wide, but there seemed to be plenty of clearance to the 36" spaced double rows.  I put the sprayer boom up on the loader bucket mount.  That let me use the hydraulic cylinders to control the height and angle of the nozzles.

  I mounted the 15 gallon sprayer tank to the cultivator, and wired the 12 volt pump to the work light switch.  That made it easy to turn the pump off and on at the end of the rows.  The antique cultivator frame was too hard to drill, so the tank is held on with clamps.

It looked like about 10 percent of the corn was chewed down about half way.  It may be early enough for that to come back and produce ears.  I finished about 15 minutes before sundown. On the drive back, I kicked two of the "chewers" out of the 4 ft tall hay.  It looked like a 2 year old buck in velvet and a 1 year old doe.

 

Edited June 21, 2021 by wolc123

[wolc123]

The RR corn that I cultivated and sprayed last week really jumped after that the rain that we had recently.  It looks like it made "knee high"  well before the 4th of July.  It the gly took out most of the weeds.

I try and keep my venison as "organic" as possible, so I use very little gly.  I usually get more than 2 seasons out of a 2-1/2 gallon jug.  I only use it directly on the corn rows. The cultivators do a good enough enough job of getting the weeds between the rows.

[wolc123]

I got the the rest of my sweetcorn cultivated, and the 2 acres of RR corn that I planted 2 weeks after the first batch, cultivated and sprayed this morning.   I just beat the rain, which is in the forecast for the rest of the week.  The spray had about 2 hours to dry before the rain hit.

Those later plantings dont look near as good as my earlier plantings.  It looks like maybe crows got at some seed, and deer definitely chewed down a lot more.  I am going to have to hit the coons real hard with the traps in order to have any chance of some corn making it until the Holiday ML season.  I may be depending more on some turnip/radish plots for that.

I will probably cultivate both batches of sweetcorn one more time.  Before I can do that, I need to fix the tire on my old Ford 8n.  That is a good "rainy day" job. That old tractor has about double the overhead crop clearance as the newer John Deere, that I used for the initial cultivation and spray.

 

[wolc123]

This is one of those days when if you look close enough, you can see the corn grow.  Warm temperature, plenty of sunshine,  and 4 inches of rain on Thursday, makes for some fast growth. 

 My back 2 acres (1st pic) is looking real good, I would cal it arm-pit high.  It should make well over 200 bushels.  Front two acres, planted just two weeks later (second pic), not so hot.  I will be lucky to get 50 bushels from that.  As long as some lasts until the Holiday ML season, that's good enough for me.

The recent rain gave me a chance to finish the rear rim change on the old 8n.  That was a tough job. Those 70 year old bolts did not want to break loose, and it was tough getting the beads loose on the rusted out rim.

As a side benefit, the kids got a bigger fire pit now, from the old rusted out rim.  They got to wait for me to finish tearing the old barn down before they can use the new 12 foot concrete one.  That little one setting on the edge of that is the cut off compressor tank one that they had been using and complaining about because it is too small.

 

 

Edited July 10, 2021 by wolc123

[wolc123]

Those two corn plots (about 4 acres total) did not directly add any meat to our freezer last year, but they contributed indirectly.  They did that by taking some of my hunting pressure off of my parents place. I was very surprised to see that there was still a little corn left, on the smaller plot, when I was back there two weeks ago. 
 

I hunted 5 of the 7 days of the last Holiday ML season, and I saw more deer then, than I did thru all the rest of gun season, after opening day.   3 of the 4 deer that I saw, on those 5 Holiday hunting days, were in and around that small corn plot. I took (3) deer (all bucks, two antlerless, one antlered) from my parents farm, one doe up at my in-laws in the Adirondacks, and none at our place during all of the 21/22 season.
 

By the looks of all the tracks in the snow,  the deer population is pretty good back by those corn plots right now.  They are really hitting the adjacent winter wheat hard, and digging up turnips, that I also planted nearby.  Hopefully, I can keep them around until September, when early antlerless gun season opens up.  

Edited February 12, 2022 by wolc123

[dmandoes]

No sheds? Turkeys?

[wolc123]

1 hour ago, dmandoes said:

No sheds? Turkeys?

I haven’t looked yet, but I found a nice shed last spring, while I was plowing that back corn plot.   I saw 3 different antlered  bucks back there, during the early September antlerless season, a 2.5 yr 8-point, a spike, and a small 4-point. There were not many turkeys around here last year.  

 

Edited February 12, 2022 by wolc123

[wolc123]

This is the shed that I found when plowing that back corn plot last spring with my old Ford 8n tractor:

I am glad it didn’t puncture one of my 70 years old rear Goodyear’s.  It was bad enough that one of the original rear rims rusted thru last year.   There is lots of good tread left on them tires with only about 2000 hours on the tractor.  

It has always been stored inside, so the weather cracking on them is not that bad.  It will be interesting to see how it plows this spring with only one loaded rear rim.  I didn’t load the new one, because that calcium solution is corrosive and I don’t feel like changing it again.  I have another new rim for when the other side rusts thru.  
 

[catskillkid]

I had my tires filled with beet juice, not rot from calcium.