Sunday

It's been a good week and a great weekend with some of the family. The little boys and I had a great time yesterday and I sure slept well last night. Little ones sure are busy! We threw June drop apples into the corn field, at the bat nest but tried not to hit each other. We pedal tractored, romped in the grass, watch a little Power Ranger and ate most of the red raspberries as usual.

They brought their favorite stuffed bird that had a electronic call inside it just like it sings. An Oriole and a Robin got left so grandpa may have to sneak back up to Cleveland this week since the outrageus shipping price would pay some of the gas bill. I think you get my drift.

Bob Streit in Iowa released his newsletter and it's a good one. You can read it here. He brings up several good topics and one is floppy corn syndrome I have written about recently and shared on Facebook and Twitter.

My bleached out corn field with the bleacher herbicides look especially floppy today. They didn't need another stress but it was getting late to control the weeds. I waited as long as I could. At least the V7-8 plants have a good deep root on them. They all lack brace roots and Bob talks about that.

One thing he brings up I have talked about for 20 years now; that is the importance of balancing the 17 needed plant nutrients. He mentions finding manganese and copper low or marginal in most floppy corn fields. I often find manganese deficiency since farmers went to using so much glyphosate. a strong chelator. With weather stress like this year floppy corn and other symptoms show up.

The corn is old enough and tall enough to start tissue ssmpling this week and I encourage all readers to sample your plants, even gardeners, especially if you have never done it before. Our sweet corn has the floppy syndrome too and I imagine it is short of micronutrients also. Several shots of Miracle Gro or other planter fertilizers can help the plant grown and reproduce. In our fields, we can spray foliar micronutrients and I just got info sheets from Porter Hybrids if anyone is interested in seeing what a good product looks like on paper.

So this week I hope to get more corn side dressed, soil and tissue samples taken and plan my trip to Pennsylvania. I will have to sneak off to Cleveland for a day, too so someone special doesn't miss their birdies. I think Sable liked them to and one was on the front porch and the other was placed on the back one.

I hope you had a great weekend, it was beautiful weather here and here's to a great week for all of us this week. I saw some awesome March corn on a friend's farm in Clermont County, I need to get a picture and show you.

Ed Winkle