Kastens Inc. Farms

What's Going On!

June 02, 2009

It's been an interesting spring so far in 2009. The wet and cool Fall of 2008 led into a warm and dry winter and then followed by a cool and dry early spring. March was a dry, windy month. We started planting April 25 with mixed early conditions. Although not wet (in terms of volume) we seemed to be constantly damp and the moisture would not let us keep rolling with the planter. Then the third week of May we went the opposite direction with 4 straight days of temperatures in the 90's with constant high winds (20-30mph). This week was followed by a general 5-8" rainfall event for the area (May 26) that shut everything down. A week after that we got about 2 days in the field and then received another general 0.50"-3" rain. Lots of water sitting around and cool cloudy conditions have made it slow to go away from the surface.

We finished planting corn on May 30th, but with all of the rain I started another field the next day and have about 90 acres left on it to finish the corn. We fired up the drill on Monday planting milo and will run both the planter and drill together for milo once the corn is done.

On the planter we put a SeedSense 20/20 on this year and based on information from that opted to put John Deere's ProMax 40 setups on each row. The ProMax is an improved seed plate design and system that does a much improved job of singulation (dropping exactly 1 kernal of corn exactly at the seem distance from the last kernal). The stock plates worked very well with normal sized and shaped corn seed (corn seeds come in various sizes and shapes) but really struggled especially with small seeds. Another thing we did to the planter was add Thompson closing wheels. We were being kept out of fields because the wet ground conditions and heavy residue were not conducive for getting the seed slots fully closed with the stock JD round, rubber closing wheels. The Thompson wheels really shined this year and have worked for well in both wet and dry conditions.

The SeedSense 20/20 has been really useful and like having a yield monitor I don't know if I would want to plant without one again. For the first time, we are able to see exactly how the planter is doing (depth, downpressure, singulation, row unit bounce).

Here is a picture of the ProMax 40 plates. This system also utilizes a knockout wheel and a double-eliminator. Excellent results as this system will allow me to singulate any size or shape of seed at a level of 99+%. The only downside to this system is that the higher levels of vacuum required for a flat plate system turns the planter into a gigantic vacuum cleaner in the field which loads me meters with fine wheat stubble and leaves and distorts the data. I'm working on a way to better filter the vacuum air coming into the back of the meter.

This pictures shows the Thompson closing wheels installed this spring to replace the stock rubber wheels. Notice also the Keeton seed firmer. On this row my Mojo Wire for the Keeton is missing and I typically lose 4 or 5 every year. Devils claws are an enemy to the Mojo wire.

Here are some pictures of crops and what they look like in early June of 2009

The yellow peas (DS Admirals) look fantastic. They are fully flowered and about 20" in height. They are a potential new crop and we have lots of angles to explore with them before they would become part of any rotation. They passed a big test this spring. They were planted in miserable conditions. I had to drill them 3" deep just to get them to lay on the top of moisture and immediately after planting multiple windy days really dried things out. At one point in digging seed, they were swollen (had taken on the little water present) and were surrounded by dry soil. I had almost given up on them when after a small (0.25") rainfall event they started popping out of the ground. I was shooting for a population of 300,000 plants per acre and got a 294,000 plant per acre stand.

Close up of a pea flower. Very viney crop and I would never run through a pea field after dark. They look very similar to most pea (like snap) varieties one would plant in their garden.

Looking back at the place over the peas. We planted 40 acres of peas this year in 3 different trial locations.

Here is what the same field looked like on April 22, 2009. Brooks Brenn and I were out doing stand counts and seeing how the drill performed when this picture was taken. As can be seen they were planted on 10" centers.

On this April 22, 2009 date, we were amazed at how much nodulation was already present in the root system. Based on recommendations from other pea growers, we double-innoculated this crop and hopefully this will pay off in a lot of atmospheric nitrogen fixation.

Here are what the soybeans look like at this on June 2, 2009. These are planted into 2008 corn stalks and 2007 wheat stubble can also be seen in the picture.

Looking down a soybean row. On each side of the soybean row the 2008 corn rows can be seen.

This is a picture of wheat recropped into 2008 corn stalks. Historically, we have struggled getting a stand into freshly harvested corn stalks but the 1990 drill much improved that problem. This field suffered a lot of winter kill, yet still looks like it will yield pretty well.

This corn was harvested in October 2008 and wheat was planted shortly after. It's amazing how fast residue breaks down when other crops are actively growing in it.

Overall, it looks like it will be a very good wheat year for farms in NW Kansas. We avoided frost damage and this crop has really never stressed that much since it was planted. I don't know if yields will be as good as the past two years, but they won't be a long ways off. The big yield reducing problem we have had this year was in our Hatcher Variety where a Mosaic "looking" leaf disease has really trimmed yields.

Here is a picture of a flag leaf from a Hatcher plant. Tissue testing at KSU showed no know diseases or other problems. The folks at KSU pointed me towards a Colorado Wheat website that showed a disease with characterstics very similar to what we are experiencing. They are calling it a "genetic lesion mimic". This website indicates that little yield loss can be expected, but some of our fields are pretty severe so we will see how things turn out.

Spring is also "work on irrigation" time of the year and we've been busy getting systems running the past few months. Last year we began the process of converting diesel and propane wells over to electricity to cut our irrigation costs. We have been installing VRD systems which so far have been working very well. In this picture we have a new pump and electric motor setup for an irrigation system in Nebraska.

Hopefully, we will start planting again tomorrow and need a good week to finish up the grain sorghum planting. Then we'll move right into wheat harvest, which looks to begin around July 1st. I'm sure the peas will need to be harvested about the same time so that will throw an interesting curve ball into the mix.