Corn, Sunflower Planting Wrapping Up

May 26, 2021

For the most part, sunflower planting in Manitoba is complete.

Morgan Cott is an agronomy extension specialist with the Manitoba Crop Alliance.

"I think that they're pretty well wrapped up. I know that some got planted last week, which is normal for sunflowers in mid-May to get planted. There's some poking through the ground now, so they're ready to go and have some good conditions for growing now."

Cott says corn planting is also wrapping up.

"Some of the early stuff is at the first leaf collar, so V1, that would have been planted at the very end of April, early May...This year plants emerged a lot faster than they do on a normal year. Usually when we're planting on May 1 or May 5, it takes to May 21st or so to emerge and this year it was only taking probably a couple weeks to get out of the ground in the typically cooler conditions."

She notes now is the time to start looking for insects such as cutworms.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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